
Qass dS^^lL^ 

Book - A 7^ fi^ 



GopghtN?. 



ms 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Poems 

Edward Farquhar 




Boston: Richard G. Badger 

The Gorham Press 

1905 



Copyright 1905 by Edward Farquhar 
All rights reserved 






A T^ 



F Tinted at 

The Gorham Press 

Boston, U. S. A. 



CONTENTS 








HISTORY 


Lesson of History . . . . . 8 


Egypt 


9 


Mediterranean . . 


10 


Prospect from Gilboa 






II 


Libyssa .... 






15 


Mary .... 






18 


Mystery of King Herod . 






23 


Christianity in the Apostles 






30 


Diocletian 






39 


Julian .... 






44 


Time and the Minstrels . 






45 


The Oak of Saint Boniface 






51 


Saint Adelaide 






57 


The Home of Adalbert . 






. 67 


The Haunting of Olaf . 






71 


Exile and Return . 






. 85 


Jehanne .... 






. 89 


Wolfe .... 






95 


Chatham in Seventy-Eight 






. 98 


Napoleon in Regeneration 






lOI 


Hope of the Moor . 






106 


Spain's Own Story . 






no 


MAN AND NATURE 


Youth .117 


Yesterday 






• 117 


The Beauty of the Unakas 






. 118 


A Truant .... 






. 118 


Transient and Permanent 






. 119 


The Tenant 






120 


Tourist's Guide 






121 


A Tale of Loves . 






122 


Success at Last 






. 123 


On the Study Table 






. 124 


The Spy .... 






. 125 



Shadow Market 

The Great and The Greatest 

Search for the World 

The Real Ghost 

The Rape of Virtue 

The Radical 

Master and Slave 

Pentholatry 

The Passing of Poesy 

Painting . 

My Faithful 

Monstrum Horrendum 

Mission 

The Lost Love . 

Leaf and Limb . 

Leadership 

Jungle 

The Last Love . 

Heredity . 

Her Reclamation 

Harbor 

Grasshopper's Last Word 

Grain Life 

Permanence 

The Fulness of Days 

Farmer's Borderland 

Eclipse 

Expostulation 

Dog Conscious 

The Confidant 

Balance 

Clouds and Dawn 

Clouds and Moon 

The Cliff and the Cataract 

City of the Dead 

Citadel 

At Worst 

The Back Log 



126 
127 
128 
129 
129 
130 
131 
132 

135 
136 

137 
138 
140 
142 

144 

145 
146 

147 
148 
149 
150 
151 
152 
156 
157 
158 
160 
161 
162 
167 
169 
170 
170 
171 
172 

173 
174 

175 



The Arbiter 








176 


Another Poem 178 


DEVOTION 


x\dam's Choice 181 


Bethesda . 








182 


Christianity 
The Coming 








183 
184 


Commencing Monk . 
Consecration . 








184 
187 


The Cross 








188 


The Director 








190 


Eupepsia . 
Eros 








191 
192 


Forward . 








192 


Job ... 

The Latest Nim 








193 
195 


Lover's Walk . 








197 


Microcosm 








198 


Mihtant 








198 


Morning and Afternoon 








IQQ 


Only a Shadow 








203 


Pavilion 






. 


204 


The Pipe . 
Silver and Gold 








205 
206 


Pure to the Pure 








207 


Regeneration 








208 


Speech of Angels . 
The Unregarded 








209 
211 


Urania 








212 


The Wooing 








. 213 



HISTORY 



LESSON OF HISTORY 

A little crisp are the ages; 
They gather into a scroll, 
They wrestle against unrolling, 
They crackle, and hack they roll ; 
You can hardly spread them fair and plain, 
But a corner will bend on itself again. 
You are fain to fix them with nail and pin; 
And what of their life when the nails are in 



EGYPT 

Land of immortal life, whom death reveres ! 
Which of the empires of primeval years 
Has breath today like thee ? who calls thee dead, 
With whom the centuries as with stars have sped ? 

Not as a sun, but cloud, thy form exalts 
Our contemplation ; is it frown or smile ? 

Thy names ring dry, like treads in earthy 
vaults ; 
Clime of enigma, veil and sphinx throughout, 
What stream was mankind's riddle, but thy Nile? 
Undoubtful thou, but minister of doubt; 

In vain for thee the Af ric sun revolved ; 
The tropic zone, that destines other growth 
To swiftest mouldering, fond o'er thee and loth, 

To earth's warm bosom clasps thee undis- 
solved ; 
Let Israel spurn thee, Hellas filch thy store, 
Thou hast, their pinions all to plume, and more. 
Not as the Gorgon, but Pygmalion's god, 

Stone grows in thee to life ; thy faithful crypts 
Pour thought and problem on this latest age ; 
Prophet or maniac art thou, fool or sage? 
In one thing didst thou wake, in thousands nod ; 
For thou didst think, the soul was of its God ; 
The shade alone of Immortality, 

Fall'n from thy genius o'er thy stony scripts. 
Keeps in thy ashes life that cannot die. 



MEDITERRANEAN 

The shore oi Sicily enchants the sea ; 
Her islets glimmer airy-blue afar, 
Each in their lambent firmament a star ; 
But where may Scylla, and the Sirens, be? 
Where wanders Arethuse, and Proserpine? 
Where wantons Galatea? Circe's vine, 
And cave of Polypheme, Aeolian grot, 
Olympian doves, and pastures of the Sun^ 
Soul of that sea and shore, they answer not. 
How' can these live, their life in those forgot? 
Spell, robe and wand are here, the wizard fled ; 
And we are left, to mumble charms undone! 

Thou, Nature, who didst pour that genius 
forth, 
Ev'n from the fountain that this glory spread. 
Nor toiled thee more the one than other birth, 
What are to thee the living or the dead? 
Thou art the same forever, and thy earth ; 
And all those flowers are with us, bloom unshed : 
How else bewail them, shining as they shone? 
Possession who has reft thee? Sighing breath, 
That dirges greatness of the world foregone, 
Knows not the living; in itself is death. 



10 



PROSPECT FROM GILBOA 

Brother Saul, receive thy sight. 

Blessing, my God : one shaft can sink ; fountain 

of life, break out ; 
Hail to the tide, eager and warm, purpling my 

edge about! 
Strength have I none to draw the blade, not for 

a groan have breath; 
Sweet is it long, to fly from life ; but the infinite 

sweetness of death! 

Over my brain, jarring till now, mantles a cloud 

of balm ; 
Spirit and nerve, raging and racked, melt in a 

rising psalm. 
Music, even as David's harp, comes wandering 

past my sense ; 
And not so thick has the cloud o'erdrawn, that 

it veils Omnipotence. 

Fate, who had griped, fast on her wheel, purpose 

and limb so long. 
Urging athwart, looses at last, yields to a Fate 

more strong; 
Throne that had chained, crown that had burned, 

pass to the destined hand ; 
Joy, that my own sweet Jonathan lies, unbound 

of the searing band! 

Thanks for the stream of his gracious blood; 

Gilboa, thy name is peace ; 
Thanks for the two, there by him fallen ; with me 

the doom shall cease. 
Pang of the sword, parting the soul, I lean to it, 

clasp it fast ; 
The God who hath scourged me all the years is 

merciful at the last. 

It 



Passion and hate, struggle and fear, slip from 

me down as loads; 
Rises my heart, widens my sight, all searches 

and all forbodes. 
Where I was galled, there have I gained ; where 

I have smitten, I taught ; 
Moment of holy rest, abide, till thou hast fulfilled 

my thought! 

Samuel, terror of all my days, hence with thy 
thunder now! 

All my voyage, tempest or calm, only my rock 
wert thou. 

Haunting my anguish yesternight, thy spirit pre- 
saged this hour ; 

But gave not omen, that on its wing I should 
pass beyond thy power. 

Jahveh was thine, Dread of the Jew, drinking 

the captive's blood ; 
Never a light of the Father-smile, of the kindly 

brotherhood. 
Whom War had spared, thy knife could rend, 

proclaimer of law Divine ! 
Avenger of our idolatries, what idol was grim 

as thine? 

Out from the tribes, Israel all, me thou hadst 

chosen alone. 
Me to be king, thou wert to reign, only the toil 

my own. 
One step mine, the All-Wise and Good repented, 

his act reviled ; 
Well done, prophet, on God to lay thy errors and 

changes wild! 



12 



Stark was thy hand, bony and cold, laid on my 

heart last eve; 
May it be true^ as the nations dream, that spirits 

their earth-bond leave? 
Comfort and healing yet there breathes, on that 

very blast of dread: 
God and His right would find their space, in the 

living and in the dead ! 

Far from me here, Spectre, thy bode; nought 

but the tender care 
Folds me about, of the simple souls, who soothed 

my misery there. 
They the reject, they gave me rest, the fatted 

calf they brought ; 
Time will be yet, when in deeds like these, shall 

the Way be rather taught ! 

Lord of the world, long had I sought, even to 
that fell night. 

Word of Thy mind, wave of Thy hand, token of 
guiding light ; 

Dead in my ways, ghostly my search ; oracles 
old were dumb ; 

Now in no Urim, prophet or dream, in Thy King- 
dom art Thou come. 

David beloved, strange and a dream now is my 

vengeful chase ! 
Thine was the realm, surely I knew, yet my 

anointed place; 
There was the rift, madness was there ; in my 

rage as true to thee, 
As in thy valor and changeless faith were all thy 

days to me. 



13 



Enter thy way, hero and sire; arise, and thy old 

lord fall; 
Earth will renown David the King, and darken 

the page of Saul. 
Worthier thou, noble my son, shalt measure, and 

roll thy tear ; 
And sad and sweet in thy song shall sound the 

name of our mountain bier. 

Not of the lost, the downward souls, in the world 

or evermore, 
I, who offered myself each day, loved country, 

and taskwork bore. 
Huge limbs, once mighty, high heart once proud, 

how little your greatness past, 
To the joy of love, to the peace of God, to the 

light that leads at last. 



14 



LIBYSSA 

Now let me try thy faith, 
Thou stamp and seal of faith, inviolate ring; 
Make me but what I am, a bodiless wraith, 
To haunt and wander worlds, as all this age. 
No gem thy treasure, a more precious thing. 
Which more than fortress mocks the Italian rage, 

That girds me close as thou. 
Aye, closer ; withering age thy cincture slacks. 
Till the mid-finger scarce the clasp may feel ; 
Which but the sharper whets those fangs of 

steel. 
Thou only, of the three Cannsean sacks. 
For glory and for wealth remainst me now ; 
But not as that proud spoil, thy kindly grace: 
No sidelong malice can thy largess tax. 
No dull ingratitude thy lustre dim ; 
Those bushels measured me this world's brief 

space, 
Eternity is thine^, dispenser grim! 
Thy golden bosom has a balm to lend, 
Which lulls asleep these infant sobs and cares; 
One nursing, and an end. 

Hark, here the squadron of the hated race. 

Already at the gate ? 
Scarce would faint Prusias other errand call ; 
That sceptred regent were no mark of theirs ; 
This hunted exile makes their earth too small 
Let me look forth, on portal-yard and fate. 
— Yes, there the ensign I have lived to hate. 

And think they, that shall wave 

O'er Hannibal their slave? 
Whom they so oft have fled, to overtake ? 
Their ancient fiend, their present gibe to make? 
Sun of our God, farewell ; fond earth, no more. 
Give me thy kiss, my spousal of the grave : 

15 



Thus; — I have drained thy lips. 
Now, ere the creeping of the fell eclipse, 
How stands the parted world, the life I bore? 
From dawn of youth to this relentless hour, 
They were my purpose, who attend me there ; 
By them, with them, for them, was all my deed ; 
And here they dig my grave. Amen, dark Power ! 
Then was it hate, in which I burned and toiled. 
Till fable of the boyish oath has grown? 
About them as no lover hangs I hung; 
Years parted not the embrace wherein we clung : 
I dressed me by the very arms I spoiled; 
My phalanx tow'rd their legion stretched her 

square ; 
Their ways I pondered, more and more agreed. 
Their country was my country, theirs my home; 
I was half Roman, ere I turned from Rome: 
I mourned not, rent from birth-land evermore, 
As when behind me sank the Apulian shore. 
— Witness, that bearing, as they file the street ! 
Earth has not such a port; earth is their seat; 
Libyssa, know thy master! little need. — 

Oh, had they been my own ! 
Ah Carthage, Carthage, widow of the sea, 
Lost Tyre's lost daughter, what had I with thee ? 
Thy pride and wildness were not for my care ; 
How vain I strove, by counsel and control, 
To make the servant as the mistress whole! 
Smoke of thy children clouds thy sunken eye ; 
Thy very gods were scarce for me to praise: 
The grace of Bel, that gave me name and aid. 
Now wavers to a dream, like all my days. 
For there is larger being; I arrayed 
My lines against no fate, but God on high ; 

I knew not, as I knovv^. 
Yet I his minister ; great Rome, and thine ! 
Who nurtured thee as I, and led thee forth? 



i6 



What century built thy walls, Queen of the 

North, 
And ground thy arts, like those few years of 

mine? 
Swift now thy step shall speed, that hath been 

slow ; 
Hereafter, if thine Alexander be. 
Scarce wilt thou owe that savior more than me. 
The vision, that o'erruled my aim so long, 
To league these mouldered states beneath my 

hand, 
This Asia, Macedon, and mumbling Greece, 
My Italy, to sunset Spain, and Gaul, 
Against thy throne, in one huge muster all, 
Shall be fulfilled ; by thee, and in thy peace. 
Eternal world shall rank us in its band, 
As countering orbs, of one concentric throng. 
Learn thou of me, discordant tribes to bind: 
Search in my army, how to sway mankind. 
But I had reared the frail against the strong; 
There was my Zama ; the Numidian town 
But prostrate saw, what these were mining down. 

The purples of the long Bithynian bay. 
That broaden on Propontis, and the coast 
Where Ilion was, nov/ thicken ; all grows dun : 
Cloud ? for the eve would glow them ; holy Sun 
Is pure aloft, and yet he pales his ray. 
In me the cloud is gathering; faithful draft, 

Welcome, and Roman host ! 
Why not go forth, and greet them as old friend ? 
Not that my goings are no more, but they 
Would little understand my new-found way. 
And think, but one more snare of that old craft. 
Best death in line of Life; the crown the end. 
— Knock ; ye shall find me as ye would, and I ; 
At last for once at one, our war forever die. 



17 



MARY 

No more, Neariel, meet no more; 
For meeting only would betray 
The heart that now must find no way; 
Thy pledges I restore. 

Henceforth another must be thine; 

My own, to bear and not repine. 

For Joseph is my father's will. 

My mother's wish, and he is just; 

They are my Thora, and I must; 
My pulses shall be still. 
So true, so fond as they to me. 
So pure to them shall I not be? 

O friend, Neariel of my dreams, 

Say, did I wrong thee? when one word, 
Had but my secret yearning stirred, 
Had severed all their schemes, — 

For they could never bear my pain, — 

And set me at thy side again ? 

But when their tender plea drew near, — 
I cannot understand it now. 
What marble overcast my brow, — 
What could I do but hear ? 
"Good daughter, we have word to tell : 
The righteous Joseph loves thee well. 

"He is not as the young and blind ; 

He woos thee not with boyish rage ; 

Yet is he scarce beyond our age, 
To whom thou art so kind; 
And many a year of sober love 
May be your portion from above. 

"His godly works the Lord has blessed ; 

His well-borne trade has brought him goods ; 

i8 



No son renews our frosting bloods ; 
Our labors find no rest, 
Yet are we falling poor, and dread 
What may befall thy precious head. 

"This good man long had fondly eyed 
Thy fair unfolding ; oft he came, 
Yet thought not thus thy hand to claim, 
Till, through our masking pride. 

The need that racked us he discerned ; 

Then gently moved what deeply burned. 

"Nor would he force thy virgin heart, 
Nor we would arm our parent right ; 
Thy joy and weal is our delight ; 
An oldhng child thou art: 

Great peace and comfort might betide ; 

Be faithful, and thyself decide." 

I never could ere this have dreamed, 

So far my own life could retire, 

My visions and my soul's desire, 

As in that hour it seemed. 

No real thing before me stood. 

But what I owed, and what they w^ould. 

May it be true, Neariel dear. 
Our love was fancy, after all? 
I saw my tenderest leaflets fall, 
And turned without a tear. 
But yet it was no fleeting strife, 
To part the hope that led my life. 

No twining of companion arms, 
No converse of two equal hearts, 
Where each its inm.ost wealth imparts, 
And all earth's chillness warms. 



19 



The bond of youth, through age to grow, 
This never must be mine to know. 

And oh, to be — tongue may not tell, 
Not in its nearest undertone, 
Save to this quivering heart alone, — • 
Mother in Israel 1 
For children on my neck to cling, 
Must this be my forbidden thing? 

may the good that I can do 

Be worth the charge of all it cost! 

I weigh not what I gained or lost ; 
I only would be true. 
If I can render, wife as child. 
My tribute, all is reconciled. 

Then let me close my heart for aye 
To all most precious things of mine ; 
Let constant cheer about me shine ; 
And mocking tongues may say, 

1 wedded but for golden bliss : 
I scorn me even to think of this. 

And Joseph — no fresh face in truth 
Has moved a greybeard's lust, I find ; 
My pensive ways they thought inclined 
To wisdom more than youth ; 
Himself I honored and caressed, 
Till almost love they thought confessed. 

Shall I be then deceiver light 

Of that clear bosom without stain, 
And traitress to my parents' reign, 
Who dealt me only right? 

Not of poor Mary be it said ; 

Her idle pangs will ask no aid. 



20 



So have my ways returned on me : 
Oh may they bring me blessing yet ! 
I was not wanton, will not fret; 
And well my lot may be. 

For when my heart had yielded all, 

Strangre visitation I recall. 



^fe' 



It minded, what I used to hear, 
From olden sires, of angels seen ; 
Still may the heavens unclose their screen, 
And that same blood I bear : 

On the sad silence of my soul, 

A rapture 'gan to rise and roll. 

There came the still Shekinah voice, 
If I can frame its utterance now, 
"Beyond all women honored thou, 
Hail, Virgin, and rejoice! 
Though mortal joys no more be thine. 
Forsake them, and accept of mine !" 

Still in that light I walk apart. 

And ever when my shadows spread, 
And ever when my task I dread, 
The tide upbears my heart. 
Lord, take that empty heart, and give 
Of Thy dear peace, my strength to live ! 

11 

The months begin to round the slow return 
Of that high hour, when first I found my way. 
I look in weakness on the world today; 
But kingdoms it would spurn ; 
A burden wears and weighs my fainting limbs, 
But stars and sun that bright creation dims. 

How little could I dream, when lowly bowed, 
21 



I gave my all to duty and my law, 
What benediction one poor act would draw, 
What glory from what cloud ! 
I almost think, true son was never born. 
Till mine shall hail the Messianic morn. 

Thus shall it be; the Voice that pledged me 
heaven. 
From earth-bond weaning, told me not that 

hour, 
That earth should crown me with her dearest 
flower. 
And measure more than even ; 
Untwining every clasp of worshipped life. 
Should throne me mother, all as child and wife. 

Nor less for thee, my Joseph ! I pour out 
My heart in offering; that no childless age 
Should be thy hallowed life's ungracious wage, 
Perplexing men with doubt ; 
But as in all things that high manhood shone, 
Thou shouldst not miss the father's palm alone. 

And mine, the virgin seal that pressed so deep 
My heart's clear table, when those tidings 

came, 
That sacred stamp forever and the same, 
Behind all veils I keep ; 
For matron, who has called the blessing down. 
Is purest maiden with most holy crown. 

O might the world, so ever kind to me, 

But share the dayspring that my hours await! 
These are the longings of my springtide state ; 
But all I leave with Thee ; 
Sufficient now, that o'er my narrow span, 
Shines Peace Thy angel, and good-will to man. 



22 



MYSTERY OF KING HEROD 

HEROD 

A glorious tale indeed is mine, 
New founder of a royal line, 
Through all the coming time to shine ; 

Were but my people such! 
But what can bounteous monarch do, 
Though he were Caesar, with a Jew, 
That hugs the old and hates the new, 

Whom no live thought can touch? 
I built them splendors, marble thrones ; 
I sowed them thick with gold and stones; 
They blinked their owlish eyes, the drones, 

And gurgled. What it meant? 
Their own cracked fane I did restore, 
Ten times the pile it was before ; 
They gloated then, but not the more 

They fathomed mine intent ; 
They tongued me smooth, but none the more 

Their ways to mine they bent. 
I spread them shows, and games each week; 
By arts and triumphs did I seek 
Instead of Jew to make them Greek ; 

Auspicious game of mine! 
O may the gods, the fair and bright. 
Their grim Jehovah sink to night, 
And leave the world to joy and light. 

And all the true divine ! 
But not a word of this, to hear ; 
And now my course is past, I fear; 
Sickness and age my seasons wear. 

And scarce my work begun. 
The worms, that else await the grave, 
My couch of pain already brave, 
Nor skill can ease, nor power can save. 

And all, and nought, is done. 
Is this great Herod, who so long 

23 



The world-wave breasted, high and strong, 
In whose wide courts the nations' throng 

Proclaimed him King of Men ? 
Yes, when young Caesar looped the crown. 
When love-lord Antony was down, 
I rode to face the victor's frown : 

I was the sovereign then! — 
Ah, how the fledging rebels hum ! 
They ween their master's lips are dumb; 
They hope their master's hand is numb; 

What is their latest howl? 
—Ho, Marshal; thou hast well returned 
From where the insurrection burned ; 
Come tell me, what hast thou discerned ; 

Are any left that growl? 

MARSHAL 

None loud in uproar ; yet it haps, 
When hasty cure is worse relapse; 
The heads we laid with hearty raps 
May not most deep design. 

HEROD 

Less riddling ; out with thy report : 
Show me the knaves and their resort. 
It may be, that my time is short ; 
Strength for the day is mine. 

MARSHAL 

gracious master, be not stark. 

If I but grope where ways are dark ; 
Who can these trackless frenzies mark. 
And catch their purpose dim? 

1 feared my fears would stir thy scorn. 
Some wizard, from the land of morn, 

24 



Reveals a King to come, new born, 
And sings a wondrous hymn. 

A star, unseen before that day, 

Had guided where the infant lay ; 

These I beheld not, but they say. 
Shall heed be given to them ? 

HEROD 

And where was this new sign, I pray? 

MARSHAL 

The hamlet Bethlehem. 

HEROD 

And couldst thou find not, who they be, 
Or child or parent, scorning me? 
Nor the old gibbering dotard see, 
Who' fed them eastern wind? 

MARSHAL 

Great leader, all was like a dream; 

By all my gleaning, I must deem, 

Not things that are, but things that seem, 

Possess their fevered mind. 
Nor babe nor sire, as I drew near, 
Nor star nor sorcerer, did appear ; 
But glorious rumor I might hear, 

And thoughts of empire find : 
Through all the breadth of Judah's land, 
The vision of some high command, 
Their wild and scattered tribes to band. 

And give them rule of earth. 
And even because the mad pretence 
Before my question vanished hence. 
As what might bear the deeper sense, 

I note the fabl-'l h->t1-. 



HEROD 

The one pretender must elude? 

Then all of such an age include ; 

Send forth and stamp the whole new brood 

Of Bethlehem vipers out. 
I know the spot, King David's home ; 
Whence their Messiah was to come; 
Destroy the hatching, all and some, 

The village round about. 

MARSHAL 

Merciful king, were that not hard? 
(Surely has pain his reason marred!) 
On infants Herod never warred — 

HEROD 

The shortest strokes are best. 
I never dropped one plash of blood, 
But it was for my kingdom's good ; 
They have not always understood ; 

Go, finish my behest. — 

\ Marshal !zoes. 



^' 



BETI-ILEHEMITE (zvitJlOlit) 

O hell-red tyrant! ever yet 
Was such a sign of horror set? 
O God, O man, do not forget 

The deed of this black day ! 
We may not bar the cruel word ; 
We may not stop the monster sword ; 
But not till heaven and earth record, 

Shall memory pass away. 

HEROD 

Yes, it is best that none should raise 
26 



Or hand or voice athwart my ways ; 
Old Herod shall endure his days, 

And never fear a foe. 
But ah, what anguish now they bring! 
I would be rather slave than king; 
And shadcwings of one horrid wing, 

May my worst wronger know ! 
What is it climbs my bed behind? 
A vapor of dissolving mind? 
Like wailing of a distant wind. 

It bodes me, hoarse and low. 
A voice that finds no other ear, 
A call beyond the world, I hear ; 
How far from all, to me how near ! 

— Ah children, spare my woe ! 

GHOST 

Come, Herod, father, hide thee not ; 

Aristobulus, wilt thou wot ? 

Knowst thou my face ? the bright red spot, 

Right here, above my heart? 
Thy thoughts are all on children, true? 
Here then is Alexander too; 
Our mother is not far from view ; 

Ah, we shall never part ! 
Yes, children shall forevermore 
Beset thee, backward and before ; 
Thine own shall tend thee, trailing gore. 

And those of Bethlehem now. 

HEROD 

I never thirsted for your fate ; 
I heard you plotted on my state : 
If else I learned, it came too late ; 
I pitied ; shouldst not thou ? 

GHOST 

We change not, change not, change not, here; 
27 



Yet not for long shall we appear ; 
Come join us, and forever hear 
Of Herod, babes and blood. 

[Gradually vanishes. 

HEROD 

— 'So; ye may tire as well as I. 
Were such avengers truly nigh? 
They ringed me round, with glare and cry; 

Now, all is but a mood. 
And yet it is a strange dispose. 
That I, so ever fond of tho^se, 
Should always deal with them as foes ; 

What Power can thus devise? 
Ten wives, and all the children thence, 
Not one to soothe my ailing sense ; 
One grandchild brings me recompense, 

And lights the darkening eyes. 
His babble dumbs the blast of fame ; 
His kindness puts my train to shame. 
Who bend the knee, who sound my name. 

With trumpet and huzza ; 
Why none, that of my bowels came. 

No prince of Solyma, 
Could ever make my household sweet? 
Their love in him alone I greet: 
Hark, to the music of his feet ! 

GRANDCHILD 

{Entering, zvith Nurse and Christmas gifts. 
Papa, papa, papa! 

HEROD 

(O dawn in darkness, peace in pain!) 
Come near, and let me see you plain : 
(Except for ghosts, my eyes are vain) — 

28 



At last my little Mars again! 
Beat all the drums, hurra! 



NURSE 



Come to your father; (hold your head; 
Not lean too hard against the bed ; 
And now remember all we said ; 
Not be too loud, or wild). 



GRANDCHILD 



See my great war-dog, say Bow wow ! 
My breastplate horse, and spear-horn cow ! 
Papa a little better now? 



HEROD 



May be a little, child. 
— Ah, I am ugly, but you smile ! 
What balm, this misery to beguile! — 
Where were you hiding, all this while? 

You must not leave me, lad. 



CHILD 

I 'fraid I make dear Father worse. 
And so I kept away, with nurse. 
I heard a man there roar and curse, 
And say, the King was mad. 

HEROD 

Oh yes, I know the man you mean ; 
And baby, just ourselves between. 

Some cause I think he had. 
— Here, warder — get my swiftest post, 

[Nurse and child retire. 
Catch up the marshal of the host, 

29 



And stop that slaughter, any cost: 

Off, at your top of speed. — 
No more on children ! let them crawl ; 
What care I, where this crown shall fall? 
And Jove or God, the Lord of all, 

Account me one good deed ! 

[He dies, unobserz'ed. 

ATTENDANT 

And yet the ghastly tale hath spread 
So wdde already, that I dread 
It haunts him, though the act be dead. 
Lord, help us in our need ! 



CHRISTIANITY IN THE APOSTLES 

PAUL^ MARK AND P-ARNABAS 
MARK 

Joy, mighty heralds of our Father's love. 
Whom Gentiles crowned for Mercury and Jove; 
How then shall we^ who know the purer way. 
Do to your greatness honor more than they ? 
How has your healing message unperplexed 
The souls of brethren here, prescription-vexed ; 
In this and all things, at the needful hour, 
God's holy part ye act, of peace with power. 
And now yet greater things arise, I wot; 
For greatest once achieved, suffice you not ; 
On what new empire does your conquest bend ? 
May humble Mark your minist'ring attend? 
Aid I may lend you, aiding more than you : 
If in m.emorial I your work renew. 

BARNABAS 

Rejoice, kind nephew ; would thy praise were less. 
Or that it sought the one sole Worthiness ; 

30 



But well thy heart is with us, and with God ; 
And prayer indeed is ours, that all we have trod 
Were but a step to larger : we again 
Are minded to survey, by land and main, 
^11 grounds we planted with the holy seed. 
For often, son of mine, is greater need 

To water and to weed, 
Than toil, first earing : none perchance oppose, 
Where curious newness tends what fervor sows ; 
But v/here the storm has tramped, or frost has 

chilled, 
There to renew the harvest unfulfilled. 
Asks, not the martyr of one hour alone^ 
But crown of patience over wisdom's throne. 
Such task, my sister's child, wouldst thou es- 
say? 

MARK 

What gladness, O my father, to repay 

Thy care and leading, with my last of breath ! 

Surely I march beside ye, to the death. 

PAUL 

Not so, fair friends ; what swiftness, with what 



ease 



We choose our vessel, for tempestuous seas ; 
This hath been tried, and found not ocean-proof; 
The morning waved him near, the noon aloof. 

Alas, if words of zeal 
Could spike the purpose, and the spirit steel, 
Who more than Mark would be companion true? 
But while Pamphylia slopes upon the blue, 
We must remember, loudest bursts are brief. 

MARK 

Nay but, our pillar and our glorious chief ! 
Didst thou but pause to learn, what drew me 
thence ? 

31 



PAUL 

No, and I need not; spare the fond pretence. 
Thy Lord had called thee, and his work was 

there ; 
Nor weak nor mighty were all other care, 
But nothing, if thy heart were on His way; 
The world had found thee, and thou saidst us 

nay. 
Back from that plow who turns his idle head. 
No more be follower where the Cross has led. 
I doom thee not, I blame not; thou mayst find 
Thy own way heavenward, for our Lord is kind : 
But walk no more with me. 

BARNABAS 

brother, fearful Paul! one breathing yet; 

Think^ how we lean on thee ! 
Can all man's life not pay one moment's debt ? 
Think how he served thee, like a page his lord ; 

Our Master how' adored! 
He left us, clogged in health, and fearing still 
The cumbrance of our progress by his ill; 
He sought the council of Jerusalem, 

Abler to serve by them ; 

1 know my nephew, son in very love; 
He will be faithful, as the skies above. 

PAUL 

He will be what he is ; an April sky. 
Receive him those he abler served, not L 
I marked his illness ; were he sick indeed, 
One touch of Christ had turned it all to speed ; 
But all uncertain where his treasure lay. 
His heart forsook us on our midmost way. 
Let spring the reed, and waver at its rill, 
For me the oak that weathers wild or still. 
He stared, when Elymas before me sank; 

32 



But scantly of our living fountain drank. 
When this poor youth shall catch in turn the pen 
To register the Life that bled for men, 
But wonder-acts his annals will indite ; 
Nought shall he grasp of inward truth and light. 

BARNABAS 

Yet naming Christ, let once his image rise ! 
Would he the wanderer turning home despise ? 
O Saul, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou ? 
Where is the Love to one another now? 
Was not the soul of all His dearest lore, 
Thy brother mending, know his fault no more? 
— My child may go with us? 

PAUL 

Nor thou nor he. 
To other fold, and other pasture ye. 
This is no mending, in the same blind sway 
Of tumbling mood to wander or to stay. 
Where is repentance, if he made no fault? 
Where is it, if he did? Thy reasons halt; 

And thou are fit with him. 
Well miight our Lord in all his strength be 

sweet ; 
He could upraise the suppliant at his feet: 
O think not, brethren, that my heart is grim ! , 
Only its weakness goads me to my task ; 
How in your sunshine would I gladly bask, 
And make apostles with a generous word! 
Another stuff the building of the Lord 
Must lay foundation, and erection lift ; 
Storm, fire and water must the fabric sift, 
And all the age these crumbling worlds endure, 

Approve the mansion pure. 
Men on that course shall grow to set at nought 
The bond of Nature and the dream of thought ; 

33 



All but as dross beside the eternal gold. 
And I were traitor, if in carnal mould 

I poured the Spirit's tide. 
Ye love, but not enough; ye dare and strive, 
Not to the end ; henceforth our steps divide. 
How could I rest in vales of earthly peace ! 
But earth's last labor yields me not release. 
God must be all or nothing. Go, and live. 

MARK 

Gone, and the whole great memory with him 

gone? 
O father, what is this? 

BARNABAS 

Deplore not, son; 
For he is of the sea, and mountain fire, 
Whose course, for weal or bale, none may retire. 
Sore has the link been straining ; let it part ; 
New comrades he will find ; heal thou my heart. 

MARK 

And true thou sayst ; when we were bound with 

him, 
Following like child-steps by a giant limb, — 
How the remembrance o'er me swells this 

hour ! — 
Oft was I tortured in my straining power, 
On his demand, insatiate as the sea. 
He seemed to burn me, a relentless flame, 
Unwearying, sleepless, evermore the same. 
Yea, let him pass, for me. 

BARNABAS 

But not his track ; for passing great was he. 
The Taurus, that no firmer stood, shall sink, 

34 



Ere he of Tarsus from the record shrink. 

Paul, I loved thee ! none but such a mould, 
So vast and tender-gleaming, sage and bold, 
Such youth celestial, with such counsel old, 

Could light this earthless glow ! 
Was all our vineyard labor, pain and bliss. 
Our spirit wedlock, to no end but this? 

Had it been mine to go ! 
Friend, guardian, brother, mightier soul of mine, 

O, thou hast cleft this heart ! 
My life, one weaving, lies in sunder torn. 

I pray my God, such woe. 
Companion of all good, be never thine! 
This anguish in thy bosom root no thorn. 
That thou shalt but implore, it may depart ! — 
Now let us find, what service lies before. 

MARK 

1 go with thee. I think, the Cyprus shore. 

Thy pleasant home of old. 
Were happy mooring, after such a blast; 
There may we search our lambs, and fence them 

fast. 
But I aspire indeed another fold : 
When I have given thee comfort as I may^ 
A calling waits, which knows not yea and nay. 
These jars and rending to the birth have brought 
My seed of peace, whose grov;th will make them 

nought. 
Long have I felt it rising ; there is none 
Who that high task has done : 
To stamp the record of the Blessed One, 
That those who saw not may believe and know. 
Many have noted word or act ; but so. 
The shape divine appeared not in its might ; 
Those beams I gather to one orb of light ; 
The life and action I enroll throughout, 

35 



That waked immortal love, and vanquished 

doubt ; 
Till, God to favor, at the ends of earth, 
Far off as Egypt and the Arabian dearth, 
Yes, even to Rome and all her sunset bound, 
The breathing presence of our Lord be found ! 
And such the worth m}^ hallowed theme would 

give, 
A hundred years my artless page might live, 
A hundred years if sentenced earth survive. 
Could heavenly tidings of more gladness be, 
Than all mankind to glory Him as we? 
Can mighty Paul do m.ore? 

BARNABAS 

Son of my vows. 
If this be shown thee, and thy God allows, 
Take heart undoubting, and the work pursue. 
Only be watchful, what thy hand shall do! 
Let not the marvel so unwrap thy mind. 
That rays of yet more glory leave thee blind. 
The Word, the accent of divinest law. 
Beyond the feats we rather heard than saw. 
Be chosen matter ; less it awes the sense. 
But larger in the Spirit's consequence. 
I will dispense thee of this holy store ; 
Then cleave to Simon, and provide thee more. 

MARK 

I heed thee well, dear uncle ; yet I deem, 
We hold as moving and as rare a theme 
In those high miracles, where Love again 
Came down from Heaven for once to dwell with 

men, 
Vouched by all witness Truth itself would seek, 
As there, where seemed the very God to speak. 

But who can all suffice? 
Be sure I asked in prayer, not once or twice, 

36 



And found the blessing, or I sank dismayed. 
But more will follow on the path once laid, 
Till Jesus in his fulness rising stand, 
Joy of the Heavens, and light of every land ! 
A new Creation, of a world more bright. 
New Resurrection, of more lasting light. 
Rapt in that fulness, I have all in all ; 
I bear no branding from the scourge of Paul. 
Strange he should claim, and we the claim ac- 
cord. 
Above all others, that he saw the Lord ! 
Apostle only, who did never see ; 
For had he seen him, something meeker he. 
Thou couldst not boast, and shame him to his 

face; 
But what was he, to shake thee from thy place? 
While yet that boy with scorners held the seat, 
Who laid his all before the Apostles' feet? 
Who first avouched him to the sainted board, 
When all eschewed him, like a thing abhorred ? 
Who made him prophet and evangelist, 
When Antioch marked us by the name of Christ? 
Who broke the ancient fetter, and led on, 
In this last verdict as in time foregone? 
What sky-like soul reared first that arching plan, 
Of Christian message to the race of man? 
Who sought him out for Greek as well as Jew, 
Whence ''of the Gentiles" his ascription grew ? 
Who shared his voyage like the mother bird, 
And bore the buffet, while he spent the word ? 
Who ever bore, harder than volleyed stone. 
Devouring pride and mastery of his own? 
Let his oblivion all the record pass. 
But earth one day shall answer, Barnabas ! 

BARNABAS 

Hush, fervid youth ! of all things first be true ; 
None thus could measure awful Paul, that knew. 

37 



Beyond that soul, in piteous weakness mured, 
No lion dared nor adamant endured ; 
To suffering swifter and to toil than speech — 
Let raging Lystra and Iconium teach — 
All-succoring, constant as the stars and sun. 
Wide in the lore, of world and Scripture won, 
Such depth all-searching, such authentic light, 
Borne from on high to pierce the heart of Night, 
So huge in daring and in thought so keen. 
Nor Jew nor Gentile have these ages seen. 
And though the very name of Christ assuaged 
The tides of passion that within thee raged, 
111 hast thou learned the lesson of his love, 
His glorious thrall thus blindly to reprove. 

O Master, Master, wert thou here once more! 
The fire of Saul would pale, thy light before. 

As dogstar at the day. 
The dreadful sweep of his dividing sword 

Were dulness, in thy word. 
And we, the silliest who adore thy ray, 
Unshamed by thee would stand, who cower at 

him. 
O may there lie, beyond our mazes dim, 
A land, a time, where Christ indeed may reign ! 
Let the great foundings of our Paul remain, 
The storms of earth will need them ; but there 

stands. 
Far o'er his creed and scheme, not made with 

hands. 
Eternal in the heavens, a home for all ; 
Thus with thy word I leave thee, noble Paul ! 
O for the world, where parting is no more! 
There shall no walls of thought, close hearts di- 
vide ; 
God speed when earth may cast the bar aside ! 

Now to our task along the Cyprian shore. 
No sound of murmur ; ere this life be done, 
My heart betides me, we shall yet be one. 

38 



DIOCLETIAN 

What would the priest ? I weary of his tales ; 
I bid my offering to the eternal gods, 
Triumphant over earth's extremest odds, 
And he must fret me that some entrail fails? 
Not of his shallow arts my fortune flows ; 
The witness of my life be far apart from those. 

The changeless favor of the thrones above 
On me has rested, not as other men ; 
Or if not theirs, I am the master then ; 
For none did victory such as mine approve. 
Flat on the very soil my course began ; 
And through all spaces cleared the loftiest bound 
of man. 

Arms were my round, mechanic soldier first. 
Then champion, captain, and commander 

wide : 
So bowed the empire to my lifting tide. 
And I was at the culm of best or worst. 
Vespasian, Antonine, or Caesar now 
With level glance encount'ring, fronted brow' to 
brow. 



Then how the nations raged against their bond! 
The rude Illyrian could but be their scorn: 
From shores of sunset and from lands of 
morn, 
From Nubian plain, from Danube and beyond, 
From deep within the bowels of the realm, 
Boiled up the Avernian floods ; I kept the master- 
ing helm. 

Ev'n that waste isle, that nurtures nought of 
worth. 
But grimness of despair, and spoil of woods, 

39 



That Arctic outland, where no commerce 
broods, 
That Britain, parted from the orb of earth, 
Ev'n there our eagle, when defiance ramped, 
At length spread wings, and o'er the conquered 
lair encamped. 

Yet did not this my statelier measure fill ; 

The reel of tyrants, dupes and sages, whirled 
Through seventy lustra of our Roman world, 
Attained not any to the stature still; 
What foremost Julius only might have 
thought, 
Now by this hand behold in calm completeness 
wrought. 

For no true empire, all these ages yet. 

Thus rocked and rolled its unproportioned 

w^ay ; 
But shreds of old appointment stretched 
astray. 
Toiled, where the novel with the ancient met; 
Division, of decay and not of form. 
Wore the huge vessel wide, besieged with many 
a storm. 

And I alone this anarchy have tamed ; 

Have reared high Rome to all her health of 

old. 
With all the realm her power hath since en- 
rolled, 
All in one order marshalled and enframed, 
By governed organ in each fair degree. 
Each on its higher leaned, and all the height on 
me. 

Now is there nought, that dream itself would 
crave ; 
The world our vassal, wide as wish can rove, 

40 



Or strength can fashion ; who an arm will 
move ? 
Vain, Alexander might our legions brave ; 
The Northern hordes have menaced, but are 
meek; 
None reached this mark, Assyrian, Mede, Egyp- 
tian, Greek. 

Is that same noon the morning of retreat ? 
Ev'n as the wise have parabled and penned, 
Perfect is finished, finishing is end? 
Why not my fabric, like the heavens complete, 
Like them immortal? Something sounds re- 
call ; 
The sun that climbed so far, by that same arc 
must fall. 

What stubborn treasons hath my progress laid ! 

Outward and inward, what opposers bent! 

Them who upheld the antique precedent, 

Them who but shrank, reluctant, and afraid; 

All that was old, I vanquished ; is there new, 

That dare affront the power to which all earth 

was true? 

One thorn of rebeldom I have assailed, 

And but the sharper hath its piercing 

grown ; 
One stock uptorn, one baleful harvest mown. 
And only wider has the seed prevailed. 
I was the new, that overpowered the old ; 
Still must there follow newer, heir to all my 
gold? 

Two hundred years and more, the godless pest 
Has branched and rooted in the ground of 

Rome ; 
All outcast lewdness there can find a home, 

41 



No vulture of the wilds, but there may nest. 
My shiftless fathers could not clasp the yoke ; 
One reef alone, whereon my baffled tides have 
broke. 

In stormy effort, once and still again, 

Prince after prince awaked our law to quell 
The ominous brood that crouched and never 
fell; 
These were but parts of power, urged forth in 

vain ; 
Till now Galerius, and vast Rome throughout, 
Rose in one monster throe — and reaped us nought 
but doubt. 

Some Judian sawyer gave them rise and name, 
In times that bore the Roman purple new ; 
This I revile not, I myself upgrew 
From dust as lowly, to this crown of fame ; 
But where his valor, that his work should live ? 
What lasting stamp on man, from that poor fugi- 
tive? 

They wear a mail, that never sword was 
ground, 
Nor whetted lance, to enter ; war may roar, 
And I have chains for all its wrath, and 
more ; 
But unresistance, what assault can wound? 
Peace, who can vanquish? patience, what con- 
trol? 
New madness have they found, these warriors 
of the soul ! 

Yet, now say many, what if these were true? 
Their shadowy God, the living? and their 

Christ 
Right Son and leader? have they not suf- 
ficed 
The very witness, all their furnace through? 

42 



Such thought might aid to shake me from my 
throne ; 
Not change the faith of old, wherein my deeds 
were done. 

Ah, give me back the splendor of my years. 
When toil and danger would but rouse my 

heart; 
How would I joy to rend these knots apart ! 
But I have touched the coast of doubts and 

fears ; 
More lovely now Dalmatian gardens seem. 
Than all the pomp of worlds, relapsing to a 
dream. 

If that were all ! Men are not as they were ; 
The Roman stands not in his thews of yore. 
Clay to my hand, it knows their clay the 
more; 
On this high crest, their dizzying senses err. 
I feel a shadow lurking on afar ; 
Gods, will ye print such figure, but the seal to 
mar? 

Yet darker : gods yourselves — how shall I say : 
Your altars comfort not these latter men? 
Your temples beam not on our soul as then? 
The wise forego you, nor the fools obey. 
My earth stands fast, why should my welkin 
swim ? 
Ye shine not as ye did? or grow mine eyes but 
dim? 

I feel the steps of time ; all is not mine : 
The task I set before me, I have done. 
That war is over, since the field is won ; 
With thee I leave the Cross, my Constantine ; 
Somewhat for after sceptres must remain ; 
Here will I shift the watch, and my sweet soil 
regain. 

43 



JULIAN 

Most beautiful soul of all, who have ever upheld 

the wall 
Of ancient faith that the siege of time had shaken 

and doomed to fall, 

Imperial Julian sought one day at the shrine of 

Thought, 
The only temple where all alike their vows and 

offerings brought, 

To learn if his toil indeed were ripe to the na- 
tion's need, 

Or where the battle were now to join, of the new 
and the olden creed. 

And within the mystic gate, already a figure sate, 
Whose crouching squalor strove in foil with his 
own resplendent state. 

When his quick bright glance had sunk on the 

lean and haggard Monk, 
With chill disdain and smouldering wrath at 

once he swelled and shrunk; 

Not that a form so poor should have dared this 

awful door — 
Of holy Marcus, of Socrates, too deep he had 

drawn his lore^ — 

But here in visible guise, full thrust on his 

loathing eyes, 
The raw usurping Christian scurf, that he 

scorned and dreaded, lies. 

Prayed the Emperor, ''Goddess great, our ar- 
biter and oiir fate, 

44 



Shall we inherit thy grace today, or on this 
pleader wait?" 

"Let me see your offering hands," breathed the 

Power her still demands ; 
**Who can show the richer holding, in my favor 

loftier stands." 

Forth at once the purple fold, high the sceptre, 

globe and gold. 
Held the Monarch, power and wisdom of the 

gorgeous world of old. 

Forth a bloodless arm uplifts, as the brown hood 

backward drifts, 
Forth a pleading empty palm, the monk; his 

needs are all his gifts. 

"The hand," said Thought at last, "which its all 

and its flesh hath cast. 
Is free to grasp the Future; thine, O King, but 

holds the Past." 



TIME AND THE MINSTRELS 

One shall he taken, another left. 

The dying splendors of the ancient day 
Yet lingered on Italian hills, when Time, 
Watching the stormy vapors of the North 
Still thickening in the gloom, took silent stand. 
In question, what to convoy, what lay down, 
Beside the deluge brink, where he must cross. 
For vast the garner of that elder world, 
And dark and strange the vounger; Time him- 
self 
Must ponder, of the freight that he could bear. 
All to enlade, would cumber not alone 
Himself, but that new shore ; to rescue nought, 

45 



Would tax him idle, and his early space 
But coursed in vain. 

There came, to search him out, 
A sweet and anxious gaze ; the Muse of old, 
Troubled at all the change and fading hour, 
And ceaseless onburst of the ruder throngs, 
Began to fear her season, and would learn 
From Senior Time, who had so cared for her, 
And friended well through all the tempests past, 
Still would he cherish her, or save at least 
Her sifted store. She found him gathering heap 
Wide on the strand ; where many a bale she saw 
Of cost high-sanctioned, many a pack beside, 
Whereof she wondered, what old Time had 

found 
To value thence ; her own most precious ware, 
So large in rate, folded belike so small, 
She traced not ; and the Merchantman appealed : 

Say, hoary Father of many tribes. 
Who keepest thy own right way, 

Whom none convinces, or checks, or bribes. 
Are my jewels in care to-day? 

I see that the world is turned about. 

That our age of gold is g-one ; 
And my heart is dark, as with grievous doubt 

If the very stars go on. 

I find the spirits on earth no more. 

To light with my holy fire ; 
For my chosen wealth to be wafted o'er. 

Is the end of my poor desire. 

My Stories, of gods and of hero souls, 
My Scenes, in their shade and light, 

My Scriptures of wisdom^ proverb rolls, 
Of Beauty adorning Right ; 

46 



And sweetest of all, my love-born lays, 

My songs of the lyre and flute. 
My chorals, lifting the Gods with praise, 

Shall ever their voice be mute? 

Earth cannot spare, what she has not borne 

But once, nor again shall see ; 
The very heaven their loss would mourn ; 

O Time, are they safe with thee? 

TIME 

Well, I have looked about ; so prest with cares, 
Each keen Divinity must hardly deem 
That I can warrant all behest of theirs, 
Mid all my lading; I but strive my part; 
And, eldest though I be, I may not start 
From rule assigned me, not as ye would scheme. 
I did assist your music, and will bear 
What best I may, of such a freight as air. 
Some of your tales I have, as I might cull. 
Of epic, drama, folk-song; these will mark 
The breeding genius, clear as record full; 
And some didactic scrolls, though tuned but dull. 
But of your dancing lyrics, though I trust 
Fair slips be arked about my hold, we must 
But scant assurance vouch ; the morning lark 
You hardly think on when the morn is past; 
How' should such twittering its own Spring out- 
last? 

MUSE 

O, have thy own dark years overtaken thee? 
Bright sense of joy, love, music forsaken thee ? 

Dull grown thy old ear, chill thy heart-flow, 
Melody, fantasy, died within thee? 

Still, while the heart swells tenderly, wilfully. 
Still, where the chords throb stormily, skilfully, 

47 



State-wielder, exile, crowned Alcaeus, 
Shall he not bide with thee, warm thee, win thee ? 



I knew him once, and thought he bore him high ; 
And since he did, I charged not on m}^ count 
The task to buoy him, who so well could mount. 
He stamped so sharp the pressure of his age, 
That other ages may the less reply. 
Such were those warblers, who thine ear engage : 
Their hour they ravisht, and the hour went by. 

M 

Father, surely, thine is but voice, not earnest ; 
Beauty thus to emptiness, Time, thou turnest? 
Dearest lore I lessoned thee, now unlearnest. 
Deaf and relentless? 

Let me deem or dream, that thy words dissemble ; 
Else indeed for honor of gods I tremble ; 
F'airest garland fall, when my saints assemble. 
Faded and scentless? 

Tell me, tell me, arbiter, awful censor, 
When these fumes have gathered a little denser, 
She will breathe, my daughter? O, Fate's dis- 
penser — 

Sappho, my only? 

No? Then why should earth to our music waken? 
Who shall guard The Poet, his Mate now taken? 
Ah, the world's best garden is waste, forsaken, 
Loveliness lonelv! 



T 

For long old Time has not been used to smile 

48 



Nor laughter moves me, in thy fondling sigh. 

Calm thee, disconsolate ; thou art as I ; 

And fear no future, as no past hath failed. 

Thy Lesbian, Venus of her Orient isle, 

So long I cherished, that I bear her still. 

Though her fine cirrus to her skies exhaled. 

Therefore already are her garlands dim ; 

Therefore my latest page her name shall fill. 

— Where then The Poet ? Ask me not of him ; 

I know not Homer, and I never knew : 

Too deep from fountains past my depth he drew. 

I labored o'er his birth, all-watchful nurse, 

I shaped the ages toward his rise afar ; 

How many a bard his prologue did rehearse. 

What growths of numbers rounded forth his 
verse. 

Through ripening tales of wandering and of war ; 

Before that dawn, how many a morning star ! 

All to be quenched in his immortal day ; 

And as he vaulted toward his opening goal, 

He passed beyond me to eternal spheres. 

He climbed the throne that fears not earth's de- 
cay, 

That rules, and recks not of my floundering years ; 

Him could I nourish, but not him control. 



M 

Oh mother Memory, come rejoice with me, 
That somewhat of thy treasury yet lies free 
From this wide-waster! though we must deplore 
These in their ruin, and so many more. 
My Theban Eagle through all heavens could 

soar. 
Yet did he never pierce the heart as these, 
Or warm like Alkman, like Simonides ; 
All to be gone? 



49 



I said not yet of all ; 
Some unbethought may linger, and some fall. 
The blunt Ascraean whom thy glance o'erpast, 
Has fibre that through all my reign may last. 
Sad Labor was his Muse ; and while his race 
Bear doom of labor, they shall guard his place. 
Another wing upbore 
His townsman of the later day ; 
High Pindar hymns of chariot, steed and crown, 
Of many a fortressed shore. 
And lineage storied long of old, where virtue was 

renown. 
But not for these I bear his tablets on the way 
Now barred tO' those, with all their sweet: 
The splendor of that praise 
Might fade with softer lays 
That nearer touched the heart and lightlier 

moved the feet ; 
But these to pleasure and to passion vowed, 
Nought reckoning but as choicer herds, 
As daintier birds, 
Ending in the damp of earth 
Dawn that bloomed such rose and purple in its 

birth, 
Fair and fleeting as the cloud, 
Bound in the passing life, no larger life await ; 
He only, from his tower far overlooked the grave ; 
Saw the estates beyond, and man the heir. 
Wrestling and racing for the glory there; 
He saved Eternity, in wrecks of creed. 
And him Eternity shall save. 
A season soon, he sowed of Plato's seed. 
And reaps his harvest. I award not these, 
I, but the vassal of more high decrees ; 
They are the Word, thy tints the flower and grass : 
Look thou upon their law, and let the leaflets pass. 

50 



THE OAK OF SAINT BONIFACE 

BONIFACE 

Hail to thee, hoary warder of this grove, 
Where Saxon rovers anchor at their rite ; 

Yet not as votarist, but in brother-love 
I greet thee, captive, in thy godless night. 

I bring salvation to this world of loss, 

That no idolatrous bulwark may withstand ; 

For every knee shall bow before the Cross, 
And our glad tidings lighten every land. 

Come from thy stand, beneath yon centuried oak, 
Where worship reeks in falsehood and in 
blood ; 

Now must it feel the ax's judgment-stroke. 
And faith must root where heathen folly stood, 

I bear no sword to havoc or enforce, 

A nobler conquest on our progress waits; 

Yet faithful hands give my behests their course ; 
Yield then thy shrine and soul to mightier 
fates. 



OFFER-PRIEST 

I know thee, dire invader, 
Thy power and purpose, well 

No warrior thou nor trader, 
Thou wilt not slay nor sell ; 

But out of Orient regions. 
Thy word of peace from far. 

Beyond all hordes and legions, 
Proclaims eternal war. 



51 



They did but gore and harry 
Our body and our good ; 

Into our soul ye carry 

Your warfare unwithstood ! 

The storming Goth and Lombard 

Full well ye do repay ; 
So heavily they cumbered 

No tract of Roman sway. 

In vain on dauntless Hermann 
The wrath of Caesar beat ; 

But what has iron German, 
Your unseen Christ to meet? 

Yet wherein is he dearer 
Than Balder of the North: 

True Son of Heaven, and bearer 
Of m.ortal pang on earth? 

Why then revile the savage, 
Who worships at this tree? 

Why our high altars ravage, 
True to the gods as ye? 

We know your name of Father, 
Which ancient Odin bears, 

To whom all kingdoms gather, 
Whose rune this oak declares, 

Gray emblem of All-nature, 

Of awful Ygdrasil, 
Whose branches every creature 

In mystic rank fulfil ; 



52 



Here dwells the god undaunted, 

The mighty Asa-Thor, 
Next Odin he is vaunted 

All gods and men before ; 

No scar his helmet sunders, 
It mocks at armies' frown, 

And where his Miolnir thunders, 
Go dwarf and giant down. 

Our valiant cannot follow 
Your faded saints above ; 

We crave our own Valhalla, 
Of glory and of love. 

There are the brave rewarded. 
There are the patient crowned. 

In brazen portals guarded. 

In founts of rapture drowned; 

Not there the valor ceases. 
That won their state sublime, 

Eternity increases 

The shining brood of time: 

The morning on the meadow 
Awakes to prowess high. 

The evening draws her shadow 
In sweetness where they He; 

The snowy swan sails over 

The quiet waters fair, 
There comes each constant lover. 

Each constant maiden there. 



53 



Why is your strife so ruthless? 

We blaze the Right as you ; 
We shame the base and truthless, 

We laud the brave and true. 

We hymn the soul undying, 

Your cross we have not broke ; 

Whence comes your band espying 
Upon our hallov^^ed oak? 



BONIFACE 

I thought not, O my brother, in these shades. 
So clear a vestige of the heaven to find ; 

Surely a morning glimmer not yet fades. 
Of light first given, and scattered through 
mankind. 

Yet are your virtues and your truth but dawn, 
Which Grace may widen to the Gospel day ; 

Not foes I read you, but disciples, drawn 
Forth of the abyss where all your numbers lay. 

And form of error, though the heart were truth. 
Must fall aside, that light may shine within ; 

Yet we may work through gentleness and ruth ; 
The cloud of darkness is not crust of sin. 

Behold, thy faith be guided, not destroyed ; 

This temple oak, this oracle of thine, 
Shall no pure offering of thy heart make void. 

But I will build it in a holier shrine. 

More is our Peter than thy brawny Thor; 

The Key will ope, where clenched the Hammer 
fast, 
The high Apostle of the golden door 

The oak shall fashion as the orb to last. 

54 



No dragon flame shall ravin, as I meant, 

These breathing fibres, wrapped about thy 
soul; 

Our steel shall prune them to our Lord's intent. 
And still before them shall your incense roll. 

There shalt thou kneel adoring as of old^ 
But now in Christ and Peter sanctified. 

When starry Fulda shall my bones enfold, 
Pray for poor Winfrid, once thy sinful guide. 
[He turns to the oak, zvith the ax. 



OFFER-PRIEST 

A whisper of relenting? 

A murmur, and a plea? 
Fault of his own lamenting ; 

Imploring aid of me? 

And is not here a valor? 

More peril he has borne. 
Than ever blanched with pallor 

Our chiefs in all their scorn. 

What Norland strengths and rages 
Can bide in battle square 

The toil and pain he wages, 
Companionless and bare? 

His force to ours is weakness ; 

Some power of god must be, 
From whom in prostrate meekness, 

They merit more than we. 

What is that piteoiis Jesus, 
Who foils our hero gods? 

What cramp and fainting seize us. 
That vanquish all our odds? 

55 



But yesterday, their edges 
Had hewn my every Umb, 

Ere I were reft such pledges ; 
Now, I could follow him. 

Gods, of thy land or my land, 
Of Southland or of North, 

Of lowland or of highland. 

Bless thee and guard henceforth! 

Thy heart is more than armor. 
Thy tongue is more than sword ; 

Thy zeal is firebrand warmer 
Than fury could afford. 

Soon or a little later, 

Our portion will be thine. 

But lover wakens hater: 
Beware the nether Rhine! 

I see, in gory vision, 

Another tribe than this, 
The brazen-hearted Frisian, 

Ring thee with howl and hiss ! 

Yet why to thee my warning? 

The martyr's bleeding crown 
Will be thy last adorning. 

And w^oo thy angels down. 

I Saxon, thou another; 

Thy blood is all as mine; 
Be thou our elder brother, 

The heritao-e be thine. 



S6 



SAINT ADELAIDE 
I 

ADELAIDA IN GARDA 

Lords had sighed, and princes prayed, 

For the hand of the wonderful Adelaide ; 

For her birth was noble as blood might be. 

Daughter of royal Burgundy, 

And brighter than luster of regal birth, 

Her beauty shone to the ends of earth. 

Full tale! if they heard of her dower within. 

It scarce had aided, their zeal to win. 

They came from near, and they came from far ; 

The shining lot, was to faint Lothar. 

Then, fairer still than her native clime, 

Far over the Alp with his crags and rime, 

The sunshine lands on her vision rose, 

Where soft winds murmur, where citron blows ; 

The Lombard, melting his Norland snow. 

His realm had planted, by meadowy Po. 

A year had stolen in sweetness by, 
And, ere she pined for her northern sky, 
A princess-babe in her bosom lay ; 
But cloud came up on her bright young day. 
Her lord at her side grew strangely pale; 
His limb, and his eye, and his brain did fail ; 
May no foul hand have brewed his bale ! 
And now in her Lombard hold alone. 
She dwells with the folk she has never known; 
Who have lost their kin with her Teuton race, 
Nor softened yet to Italian grace. 
Affliction, touchstone of all our worth, 
Her starry soul in the dark drew forth. 
Fixt on the seat of her lost Lothar, 
Came snake-wise creeping old Berengar ; 
Neighbor duke, with his wicked wife, 

57 



The venomed Willa, the fount of strife. 

Those lands, that seat, would be theirs, they 

planned, 
Could they win to their son the widowed hand. 
But the young queen savored their scheme, a 

draft 
More wholesome scarce than her liege had quaft ; 
Had the same hand mixt them, so like in taste? 
All three were goblins amid the waste ; 
But the deadly dam was the first, and last. 
Who now shall succor poor Adelaide? 
No friend is near, to protect or aid ; 
Many who would, are in powerless thrall, 
The few who could, are beyond her call. 
No days were those of the magic wire, 
The guarded post, or the steed of fire ; 
She whom the world had so. fondly sought, 
Adored of all, must be grimly taught. 
She was only loved as the things of chase ; 
Ah, ladies bright, have you better case? 
On one stern column she may depend. 
Patience, weakness and woman's friend, 
That wards the wrong or that waits the end. 
No force or menace, no time nor mean. 
Can bend the w^ill of the soft young queen ; 
In towers of Garda they bind her fast, 
No sigh nor rumor from whence hath passed. 
Till spirit or life shall yield at last. 

ADELAIDE 

Yet Thou shalt help me, O God of our fathers, 

Thou in my youth so oft forgot : 
My youth ! is it frost of age that gathers 

About this heart, that it blenches not? 

Nineteen years I have scarcely numbered ; 
And oh, what ocean of time has rolled, 

S8 



Since, over Jura, a lamb I slumbered, 
Dreadless, warm in my father's fold ! 

Strange, this merciless wall that locks me ; 

Strange, the water that sparkles there. 
The free wide ripple that laughs and mocks me, 

Fairy-fine, in its marges fair! 

Stranger still, that my spirit breaks not ; 

This is not strength of mine at all. 
He smites. He humbles, and He forsakes not; 

Hidden, but never beyond our call. 

When I was happy, I did not know Him ; 

When joy is farthest, I feel Him near. 
The storms that shadow my world, they show 
Him; 

— Criest thou, Emma? but He will hear. 

Be this my Love ; I have known no other ; 

Light Lothar, he was never mine. 
Let man hereafter be only brother; 

None clasp my hand but the Hand divine. 

Who else upbore m.e, against the tyrant, 
Against the fiend that he calls his wife? 

Against their implet, the vain-aspirant. 
Leagued in plots on my more than life? - 

ifag-bred Adalbert, vampyre Willa, 
Gray in thy godlessness Berengar, 

This dungeon rather than your proud villa. 
The death ye threat than your lineage, far ! 

I have but pity for those who leave me, 
Whom I have friended — amid this den ; 

More when they flattered, they did deceive m.e; 
They know not the power, that smiles at men. 

59 



There is only one, whom I least had reckoned, 
Who finds rare ways to my tortured cell ; 

Now he has nourisht me, now has beckoned. 
My port without, when the evening fell. 

One, upright walking where others falter. 
Steadfast one, where the rest have shrunk ; 

One, substance true where the shadows alter ; 
One, who is happy, and man: a Monk. 

Where is the secret ? Ah, well I find him ; 

A heart, not given to things of time. 
(Pray that it be not, my features blind him! — 

I hardly think, in their want and grime). 

Lone and lowest^ he yet can teach me; 

— And now, as if I could stay the sphere 
With my very thinking — how should he reach 
me ? — 

On my extremity, he is here. 

MONK 

Lady of the Chain, at last I bring 

No piteous morsels, but the cherisht thing 
Thou canst not see nor touch, yet shall it feed 
More than all meats and drinks, thy hungry need ; 
On which I have labored, many toilsome days ; 

1 bring thee freedom. Sink not in amaze. 

ADELAIDE 

Not stupor, save thy goodness and thy truth 
Confound me ; wherefore should my blighted 

youth 
So charge thy effort? say thou canst release 
My fettered limbs ; will that secure my peace ? 
Where then shall I betake me? Why dost thou 
As if a throne were here, adore and bow ? 
Thinkst thou I am a queen? 

60 



MONK 

On earth not so; 
Thy reign the everlasting courts may know. 
Here hast thou shed one crown, and shalt be 

seen 
A lofty Empress for a lowly queen. 



I know thee not. 



ADELAIDE 



MONK 



A little time shall prove. 
Now hearken, while I shape thy glad remove. 

ADELAIDE 

Time has forgot me in this keep, I think. 

MONK 

At least thou canst discern the twilight sink: 
When from thy western lattice, evening lights. 
Red on the Lake and violet on the heights. 
Yield up the day to shades, be ready then ; 
Upon the close of darkness, trusted men 
Shall force thy bonds, and lead thee shadowed 

ways, 
To where Lord Albert on thy cominc;;- stays, 
And he shall bid Canossa fold thee fast. 

ADELAIDE 

And there how long shall that kind shelter last? 
I will not be the punishment of good : 
When he shall feel Verona's dragon brood 
Fierce on his traces, demon Berengar 
Encoil him round with traitor wile and war, 
When gorgon Willa hath her engine set, 
How shall his nobleness defy the net? 
If ye will rescue, in some cave like thine 

6i 



Bestow me^ where no track will pierce the shrine. 
There may I be as thou ; sequestered nun, 
Training for Heaven, all earthly purpose done. 

MONK 

Untrustful Adelaide ! art thou so fond 
On these thy keepers and their perjured bond, 
That for a dream of wrong, not thine be sure, 
Extreme of wrong indeed, thou wilt endure? 
Then let me teach thee, what thy fates contrive : 
The mightiest Monarch in the world alive, 
Unconquered Otto of the German throne. 
Is near, to make thy cause and thee his own. 
Him whom the barons of the Northern wild. 
Who knew no lord, have homaged, each a child ; 
Him whom the Dane, the Vandal and the Hun, 
In thraldom worship or in terror shun. 
Him whom the Saxon and the Latin state, 
Like giant Karl his foretype, name the Great ; 
Yet him, the knightliest and the gentlest soul. 
Too high to scorn at law's and love's control — 
To him we have pleaded of thy wrongs and fame ; 
We felt the reddening in his iron frame; 
It might be love, or vengeance — it was flame. 
And where he kindles, earth shall know the fire : 
Hold counsel ; now no more ; I must retire. 
— Surely thou heedest ? Thou hast heard me well ? 

ADELAIDE 

I listened. It is earth, whereon we dwell ; 
Thy words are heaven; mere vision, trance and 
bliss. 

MONK 

That world, O woman, is the soul of this; 
Hast thou the witness of eternal things. 
Know that amidst our dark their dawning springs. 

62 



ADELAIDE 

Farewell. — A dream indeed is this to me; 
But thou art faithful, and I follow thee. 

[Monk exit. 
— Yet I had labored in this very suit; 
Had prayed the Emperor, and had watched for 

fruit. 
What I had moved and imaged^ — to be true, 
Is marvel past the wildest of the new. 
It seems, to nurse within, and fold about, 
Makes only stranger to the world without. — 
What has this holy man ? he would not gloze ; 
Ever, by far, more than he speaks he knows. 
Imperial Otto! wont all worlds to move, 
The squalid captive. He could stoop to love? 
What else might stir the passion they discerned? 
Ambition, only, through occasion burned? 
A fair pretence, Italian crowns to snatch! 
Yet pure-eyed Martin keeps a clearer watch; — 
— Alas, frail heart! how many breaths are gone, 
Since I was vowed to love but God alone! 
And now, have I done treason to His claim. 
To love the man, whose glory is the same? 
Is that not power of God : law, truth, and sword ? 
Does God reveal Him, but in such a Lord? 
Is this the smile of Heaven upon my pain. 
Or last and subtlest of temptation's train? — 
And here I riot in my heart, and sit 
The while in chains amid this loathly pit! 
A throne, I hope, would humble ; here I soar. 
In very joy, that chains can do no more. 
On this free soul their brand they never set ; 
Now, precious triplet! we may foil you yet. 
— His will be done! — Whose will? — My hold is 

gone ; 
Woman, I can but wait. — The night draws on: 
How like the corpse of loveliness, the Lake 



63 



Lies ghastly gray; no more the shimmers wake, 
With fainter pinions of the parting airs ; 
Cut by my grating into spectral squares^ 
It binds the awful hills, that rise and loom, 
Alps in their glory, monsters in their gloom, 
Who shut the last of light from evening skies : 

One moment since, what hues of hope were 
there ! 

This moment, settling into dim despair ; 
Yet there, or not on earth, my freedom lies. 
Under this bank, I see, or do I feel, 
Soft hitherward a light-wing shallop steal : 
Dark and my shackles bar the further view ; 
Now rest ; and Light shine inward, clear and 
true. 

II 

ADELHEID IN SELTZ 

999 
'Tn these deep solitudes and hallow'd cells. 
Where heavenly-pensive contemplation dwells^ 
And ever-musing melancholy reigns" — 
Where have I heard these mourning-music 

strains ? 
The cloister that sustains my withering limbs. 
That hears my last thanksgiving prayers and 

hymns, 
Not one sad sense or meditation moves, 
But crowns my warfare, and fulfills my loves. 
Like one that bends at evening back to rest. 
I waive all burden from my care-worn breast. 
And backward view the march of wondrous 

years, 
Their joys and glories, their defeats and tears. 
Like change and like endurance, who hath 

known ? 
Such ruin and such triumph, as my own? 

64 



Of men, far more of women, I alone ! 

What drew me from the common lot so far? 

I know not; I am but as others are; 

Save that I learned, while yet my day was new, 

My steps to render, where the Way was true. 

Here was my secret; all as well may fare. 

Empress or peasant, who that secret share. 

Next year, they say, will be the last of earth ; 
A thousand winters from the Holy Birth, 
Will sear the world to faUing; be it so! 
Light word to me, who left it long ago. 
And as I ponder, silent now so long, 
My past all present, wakens into song: 

Mightiest Otto, shepherd of nations, longer the 
seasons have o'er me roll'd 

Life's wide spaces, left of thy shelter, than in our 
happiness all we told; 

Yet thou hast held me, led by thy providence, 
never asunder, all as of old, 
Angel and strength of the Highest! 

How could I fashion thine and my firstborn, lead 
him to potent and shining parts. 

How could I rule these turbulent wealsmen, awe 
their valor, and bind their hearts, 

Then when anew I must shoulder empire, long- 
time weaned of its pomps and smarts, 
Wert thou not foremost and nighest? 

Child and grandchild, both I trained them, him 

with thee and him alone ; 
Wonder of the World they call him^ of thy name 

this latest one ; 
How they marvel in his brightness! how upon 

the realms he shone! 
All, but glimmers of Thee. 



6s 



And those earlier years of wandering: how I 

sped them, thou afar? 
Years of girldom, years of princedom,, years of 

weed and Berengar ; 
And that other — no more name her, name of 

hatred worse than war ; 
Hate is a tale, with me. 

The years are almost fifty now, since in that 

breathless night, 
My dungeon portal grated soft, and heavy feet 

stepped light, 
Links opened — still the print is red, on this old 

wrist, the right — 
And — only to follow ! 
Ah, but to straighten those young limbs ! I think, 

no other bliss, 
Not rescue, not escape nor peace, had quite the 

taste of this ! 
Then, how Verona coiled and sprang — till Thou 

the dragon hiss 
Once quenched, my Apollo ! 

— Dear God, receive me from this pagan roam 1 
What are these mem'ries, to this last long home ? 
Far more that other, where I hope to come. 
If this fixed life can cease ! 

life ! that ghostly functioners call short ; 
What ^ons link me to my father's court ! 
But not my glories, nor the world's report. 

Are now my pledge of peace. 

Once, I remember, in Garda's mew, 

1 sat, revolving the seasons through. 

That had led from where my childhood grew ; 
Eternal was their name. 



66 



Here, thrice those ages and changes meh 
Since there in my suppUant bond I kneU ; 
Time was it never, in which I dwelt — 
Eternal, and the same. 

There are, who think to call me Saint ! 
I hear the very heaven's complaint ; 
Oh keep that name from earthly taint, 

Like this of mine! 
I only know, the people's love, 
That crowns me in my last remove^ 
I prize all other crowns above. 

As Love divine. 
That I have raised the bleeding heart. 
And stanched the wound and plucked the dart,- 
Let all my titles else depart; 

Lord, this is thine. 



THE HOME OF ADALBERT 

Here is Bohemia, forest and river, mountain and 

village, my cradle of old. 
Here is Prague, in her Moldau rampart, throne 

hereafter, in glory and gold. 
These were the nurse of my tender childhood, 

these the haunt of my dreaming youth ; 
Here is the lot of my age assigned me, rank in 

the vineyard of holy Truth. 
Care and cure of my brother souls ; my kindred 

and mates of the days of yore. 
Now to guide them in ways of blessing; how 

should Favor approve me more? 
Yet I return on my native woodwalks, lone and 

a wanderer, far abroad ; 



67 



Seeking my rest, and remembering sweetness, 
captive-like whom the years defraud ; 

Missing ever the place that fits the spirit within 

as the vest our clay. 
Shore alone of the earth's pollutions, where I 

have bathed in a heavenly ray. 

O for the slopes of my pure Cassino ! walls and 

arches of infinite Rome! 
O for the airs, and the hallowing presence — O 

my only availing home! 

Is it that perishing Beauty lures me ? what is the 

yellow of Tiber waves, 
Licking their flats, to the emerald islets, clear in 

its lustre that Moldau laves? 

What are the wastes of the still Campagna, what 
are the ruined and ravaged piles. 

Matched by the virgin woods and waters, world 
where the rising future smiles? 

There, but there are the just made perfect, there 
are the dead that forever live; 

There I can take my hold on holies ; here in the 
wilderness, vainly strive. 

Trees, wild beasts and the wilder savage, mind 

me not of the life divine ; 
AVeak in the darkling world I stumble, failing a 

grasp more strong than mine. 

There is the breath of the high salvation ; mon- 
arch-bishops, and martyrs all; 

Very Christ in his parted members ; vice-Lord 
Peter, and seraph Paul. 

68 



There one life, of the earth-lives only, brings to 

the mind and the sight below, 
Image of Heaven, and soul-march onward, right 

from the thousand years aeo. 



"^fc)' 



There I have found the nuptial cloister, over the 

clouds of time one star, 
Burial garden and resurrection, salt of the world, 

most near and far. 

There alone I can live my remnant ; there I would 

couch these bones of mine. 
Dust of the everlasting City, atom of holiest 

Aventine. 

House of the Lord, to be thy keeper, to fetch 
and carry, to sweep and clean ! 

Splendor of palaces, throngs attendant, empire's 
honor, to this were mean. 

Orange-flowers, of the heavenly bridal, clime of 

His chosen eastern land ; 
Towers and hills of the mightier Zion, founded 

of old, for aye to stand! 

Love of woman, the songsters echo; and I have 
known it, in days foregone ; 

Where has it burned like this with passion, deep- 
ened its clasp as age drew on? 

Tell me not that my lust is earthly; was not 
Christ of the earth, and still? 

Are we the less or the more to love him^ linger- 
ing, longing our spirit's fill? 

There, where his life and his work lie centerea, 
there where his Passion is still renewed, 

69 



There in the throb of the world's heart-pulses, 
there with the soul in her solitude. 

Not of the flesh is the cord that binds me, not 
for earth but for Heaven I yearn, 

Hungering after the lowly service, whither I 
struggle, and must return. 

Here I have striven, a faithful plowman; hard 
was the earing, and scant the grain ; 

Bells of the Sant-Alessio beat in my homesick 
heart for its fold again. 

Well do. I know you, O powers above me, wide 

archbishop and holy Pope; 
Surely my faith ye would build, and charity, 

meanwhile haply undo my hope, 

Yoke will ye bind on me, little bethinking, 
whether for ox or for only sheep : 

This be sure, or ye soon will find it, you may 
drive, but the Lord must keep! 

Forth of my peace may your wisdom pluck me ; 

I will follow, and murmur not; 
World-light Gregory, meteor Otho, lead as ye 

will my outcast lot : 

Little the harvest that I shall ripen ; yet may I 

render one ear of good ; 
Swift, I augur, the blade shall reach me^ — ox or 

lamb, I can yield m^y blood. 

Life no more in the barbarous outlands ! hurl me 

forth on the Northern hold, 
Sound the trumpet, and I assault it — soon my 

valor will stretch me cold. 

70 



Only a prayer — O Christ assoil me — lay but my 

earth in its earthly home ; 
Heart that may sigh for exile Woitech, know 

his rest when it looks on Rome. 



THE HAUNTING OF OLAF 

1 

On the stormy Ogvald, 

Sat King Olaf; 

All Norway over, 

Now his vassals numbered. 

Not as old-world conquerors, 
Olaf came to conquer: 
He, all sea-kings humbbng, 
His own spirit humbled ; 
On his year-long tossing, 
Took the yoke of Christ. 
Not then as after. 
All acclaimed the christening; 
Not in skyward building, 
Bishop sleek and balmy. 
Not with fattening friar, 
Fared the lonely Truth ; 
O'er the barren Northland, 
By her brave apostles, 
Grim in heathen grapple, 
Glad with heavenly brightness. 
Shone in rising glory 
Rays of Galilee. 
Peace was on her pathway, 
In her walk was pureness, 
Faith and Hope her following, 

71 



Kindness filled her hand. 
These the wild-heart Olaf 
Yet had will to welcome ; 
And his rugged forehead 
Smoothed its frown to smiling, 
As the bounteous father 
Bears with headlong boyhood, 
Spurning home in uproar, 
Sporting wild and guideless, 
Garb and girl despising; 
When the brand of Freya 
That rude breast has dinted, 
One among the soft ones 
Waked not scorn but longing. 
How his brawling drops ; 
How the bud and blossom 
Of Manner blows upon him ; 
And in this new mildness. 
Manhood first has dawned ; 
Such the Spring of Norway, 
When that Sun had searched her; 
So unarm ored Olaf 
Eyed his forward people, 
Watched their works, unfolding. 
Heal the wounds of war. 

Not ravage only. 

Ruled now the rovers ; 

Far shores they wandered. 

Widened the West. 



H 

But now alone on the Ogvald cliff. 

Sat Olaf, between the land and sea ; 

Of plodding harrow and tripping skiff, 

Carl, fisher and viking, lord was he. 

Evening had touched the wave ; 

Earth-looks were settling grave. 



72 



And not all rest was the royal soul; 

Impatient whiles with the canting folk, 
His ocean being would surge and roll, 
As a new-led captive will strain the yoke. 
Then, o'er his realms of old. 
Brooded he, uncontrolled. 

Out of the stealing ocean-rnist, 

Out of the breeze that the crag cut sharp, 
Out of the gloom where the strath lay whist ; 
A Shape drew near on the horded scarp. 
Long, it aroused him not; 
Once marked, no more forgot. 

Dread stranger, yet as the form best known. 

In oak-moss beard and in wave-weed hair; 
Blue cap and mantle, as wings outflown ; 
Strangest the eye^ with the shrouded glare. 
Eye, not eyes, he bore; 
World could abide no more. 

On either shoulder the Raven stood, 

The Wolf at each foot was marching dumb. 
Went scarce a tremor through Olaf's blood. 
That back from exile was Odin come. 
Greeting there passed not yet ; 
Too close the spirits met. 

With no rebuke, nor a mute reproach. 

The tall Controller by Olaf sat; 
He braided not, how new lords encroach; 
If altars tumbled, he wist not that ; 
Only of times afar 
Breathed he, their v/ilds and war. 

Of gods in the high Valhalla, 

Of infinite Ygdrasil, 
Of Norn, of Edda and Vala, 

Who speer of the silent Will ; 

73 



Of its work in the gray world-morning, 

Of Nififel and Muspelheim, 
Of Ymir, and gap Ginnunga, 
That parted the fire and rime; 
Of Dainn and DvaHn, 
Of Goinn and Moinn, 
Of Htiginn and Muninn, 

Of Buri and Bor ; 
Of Baldur and Bragi, 
Of Himinn and Hela, 
Of Vilya and Vea, 

Of Vidar and Thor; 
The gods in their brightness, 

The giants of yore ; 
Of Askur and Embla, 

The ash and the elm, 
That grew the mortals 

Of Midgard realm ; 
The prime creation 

Of Thrael and Karl, 
To the generation 

Of Thegn and Jarl ; 
The mighty Saga, 

That ancients tell. 
The downmost fountain 

Of Mimir's well. 

King Olaf hearkened without one word; 

The waves of his turbid spirit sank ; 
But they fell to a tide which vastlier stirred. 
Than fuming surges that beat the bank. 
Gone was the Orient light ; 
Round him, All-Father's might. 

The tale swept on, to the midmost watch 
Of the soft unmurmuring Easter night. 

Now hall and hovel should set the latch ; 

The King? aisle, chamber, they peer in fright. 

74 



Bishop his hauntings knew ; 
Groped out the seaward view. 

No sound but the bump of the wave below ; 

No form that guested the lonely King. 
"Sleep must have stolen him, hours ago," 
He thought ; but nearer, another thing : 
Wild-wide the dreadful eyes ; 
Madness had such a guise. 

Of fear, of chiding, of pleaful awe, 

Made up the Bishop a voice at last : 
"Come, rise, O lawgiver, knov^'' thy law ; 
Far is the bound of thy folding past." 
Olaf unsisting turned; 
Rule, he had never spurned. 

He looked once more on the Asgard shape, 

Sore loth to break the enchanted strain ; 

But, wrapped in azure of drifting cape, 

It vouched not if god or if ghost remain. 

Like one whose joints had slept, 

Home with his priest he crept. 



HI 



There I know not the rest or the dreams that the 
monarch awaited ; 
Only the morning found, in the newness of 
olden years. 
Now was the Cross a dream, that in rousing 
summons abated ; 
Nought was love but the holm, the dragon 
prow and the spears. 
Darting of Berserkir ire 
Tingled throughout him in fire; 

75 



Knives half rusted an age he grasped, and by 

three and by four, 
Kept them twirling at once in air^ as he used of 

yore. 

Bishop had sought his door, for the office of 
matin devotion ; 
Ghasted, the figure he met, forth clanking in 
armor and sword. 
"What, has rebel uproared thy land, or foeman 
thy ocean? 
Even so let us first ask favor and help of the 
Lord." 

Stormily Olaf replied, 
"Hence with 3^our sycophant pride! 
I have been crawling and mouthing your old 

wives' tales to my fill ; 
Now am I man again, and minister Odin's will." 

"God !" said the rueful pope, "has the Enemy 
griped thee forever? 
All thy Gospel a gleam, thy Savior mocked 
and betrayed? 
Think of thy growth in his grace, good work, 
and our holy endeavor ;" — 
Swept the king from his side, and the patri- 
arch sore dismayed. 

Soon by the Queen he stood, 
Thyra, the fair and good : 
"What are these arms, my liege? for battle, or 

game ?" she asked ; 
Knowing of old his joy, where strength and 
where skill were tasked. 

Olaf was giant-willed, and in rage unsparing as 
demon ; 
Yet at its utmost flood there was bank of ruth 
for his Queen. 

76 



"I must awhile be gone, be soldier awhile and 
seaman ; 
Old feuds burn, ere the coast be safe, and the 
clime serene," 

Smoothing his passage he said ; 
Thyra, in shadowing dread. 
Paused him no more, nor questioned, but gazed 

like a charm-drawn bird, 
Weeting of change unspoken, and hearkening 
more than the word. 



Forth to his lords he strode, to the scantly re- 
generate vikings ; 
"Friends, we are coursing a game," he spoke, 
''too far in the air. 
"Men of the East cannot rule the man of the 
North to their likings ; 
Thor and Odin are ours, their own may they 
keep with them there. 

C5ut with the drivelling priests; 
Back to our fights and our feasts ; 
Mine is the blame, who have forced your fashion 

so long astray; 
Thought it were all for good ; let us now to our 
homeborn way." 

Often the peal of the trump those barons had 
heard on their charges, 
Firing the hardy nerve to deeds of valor and 
fame ; 
Never an eagerer blast the importunate spirit 
enlarges, 
Than in the call of their king, rebuilding their 
ancient frame. 

"Round to the gospellers go ; 
Lay their new infamies low !" 



17 



First they would hurl the Cross from its guard 

of the palace door ; 
Save that a voice forewarned, it had once been 

hammer of Thor. 

Such indeed was the lot, some wise^ of the land's 
conversion ; 
Sager spirits had wrought, on likenesses rather 
than odds. 
Glory they cast on the new, and not on the old 
aspersion ; 
Godhead itself destroying not all, but fulfilling 
the gods. 

So in his mellower mood, 
Olaf had compassed his good ; 
Now it was no black magic that wrested his 

heart in a beat. 
Only a lapsing hour where neighboring faiths 
might greet. 

Yet, and of high degree, in the band of those 
hard-reined vassals, 
Some there were, who had clasped the truth 
of the Christ more deep ; 
Parted once and for all with bloodstone, ravage 
and wassails, 
Known to the kingdom of peace, and minded 
its rule to keep. 

These, in alarm and repair. 
Stole from the renegades there. 
Silent in action as spies, with a whisper of sig- 
nal to each, 
Drew to the chapel aside, where the Bishop 
might counsel teach. 

Soon their plotting was known to the King, as 
he mused of his courses ; 



78 



Hardly may deed of the realm the stoop of 
that glance evade. 
Straightway rose on its beach the tide of his pur- 
pose and forces; 
Never a scruple more within him resistance 
weighed. 

Fierce on their conclave he broke : 
''Slaves, are ye bursting my yoke? 
Scatter your idle files, or learn at your life-blood 

cost, 
Whether Lord Odin yield to your bannerless 
chanting host." 

On like a cloud of wrath he drove, not deigning 
their reason; 
Back on themselves they sank, none zealous 
for reason's sake. 
Not in the power of the Cross, wild will, nor 
darkness of treason, 
Lived there the man who dared the rage of 
Olaf awake. 

Onward and outward he passed; 
Cordial the maelstrom blast; 
Next he bethought him to league, by their an- 
cient standard, his thanes. 
Lording and thrall, who of old had swept with 
him seas and plains. 

Not in the fury alone of bloodthirst w^aged he 
the banning; 
Broils of the past new-rose, old schemes of 
enlarging power. 
Danes to be mastered were there, grim isles his 
vengeance were fanning; 
Sigrid, the proud Swede queen, yet waited the 
auditing hour. 

Such in their embers had lain. 
Smothered, and smouldering vain, 

79 , 



Under the ash of his Christian penance and 

meekness long: 
Blazing aloft in one^ they should right him the 

years of wrong. 

One, of the lowly born, he approached alone at 
his cottage ; 
Bondi, his herdsman and friend, knit fast with 
his heart by worth. 
Olaf would leave the throne, to share of his 
thatch and his pottage; 
Peaceful now as his lambs, one-grown with 
the bountiful Earth, 
Lion of valor in strife, 
Olaf had thanked him for life. 
Once when his Jarls, beat back, had uncovered 

his side to the sword. 
Faithful and mighty the slave, hewn, mangled, 
had shielded his lord. 

Never such truth forgetting, the Chief made 
speed to his dwelling; 
Master of sheep on master of men looked 
forth of his fold. 
Rose his dame from within at the voice, no need 
of his telling ; 
Glad, nor startling at helm and spear, for her 
sight was old. 

Up from its ashes at play, 
Wondering, not in dismay, 
Watched him a sun-brown child, through eyes, 

in the pure of their blue, 
Cleansing the soil of the face, where Nurse Earth 
frolicked her hue. 

Thinking what deeps would stir, at the summons 
to ranging and battle, 

80 



*'Bondi, old comrade," said he, "we rust in our 
idleness here. 
Come with me, leave to a churl thy hurdles, thy 
barn and thy cattle ; 
Under the gods of the North, let us ride on 
our old career." 

All in the proem was told; 
Bondi before him hung cold ; 
Stricken the crone ; till the peasant, in accent 

prophetic and dim. 
Quavered his rude soul forth, like the murmur 
of supplicant hymn : 

''Are thy days of mercy done. 
Lord of ocean, Trygveson? 
Thou didst open Heaven before us ; 
Heaven so soon its compass run? 

All my years of blood were past ; 
I had found me rest at last ; 
God was Father^ man was brother ; 
Voyage over, anchor fast. 

Hast thou not enough of jar? 
Thou wert terrible in war ; 
Thou in peace wert loved and hallowed ; 
Surely this is nobler far ! 

Shall this cabin, dressed in fire. 
Feed and fill not spoilers' ire ? 
This old wife be dragged in fetters? 
Babies pike-tossed at their sire? 

— I, grown coward ? Look not so ; 
Olaf, Olaf , thou dost know ! 
Whether toil or danger quells me. 
Thou hast proved it long ago. 

8i 



Not these comforts of the ground 
Hold so fast my spirit bound ; 
Thou hast shown us Law and Leader, 
Over all dominion crowned. 

In thy tidings of the Cross, 
We had covered earthly loss ; 
Peace and pleasures, war and glories, 
By that gold were all but dross. 

Deadlier strife the foe within 
Waged, than iron battle's din ; 
Not the thunder of all armies 
Tested hardihood like sin. 

Fury well may peril hide ; 
God alone can vanquish pride. 
What are shouts and buffets, think ye, 
When the gulf of hell is wide? 

Even more than all of this. 
Was the wonder and the bliss^ 
When thy planting grew to fulness: 
Earth and heaven seemed to kiss. 

Then our low and creeping span 
Widened into mighty plan ; 
All was marvel, all was reason ; 

Hope and Love had dawned on man. 

All our world had moved a pace. 
Forward on its giant race; 
Not an often thought with old men ; 
Must she turn upon her trace?" 

Ever the thrall had been meeker, the more had 
his lord been gracious ; 

82 



Only, the under rock of the Norway peasant 
was there. 
Listening, Olaf had felt his shield too weighty 
and spacious ; 
Lance too long; slidden down, they lay to the 
wantoning air. 

Yea, and it seemed that his helm, 
Brain was beginning to whelm ; 
Quietly so had it loosed, and he stood in his 

features as they. 
Rapt as on yesternight, but now by a godlier lay. 

Never a word he spoke, but "Keep to the home 
of thy blessing ; 
Will, that I found so good, I never could take 
thee without." 
Round he turned, as to rid him the spell of that 
gentle possessing; 
Grave and regal his mien, in his heart was the 
gloaming of doubt. 

Back to his hall as he stept. 
Numbness his being o'ercrept ; 
Coming of day, hot dark, was the twilight that 

folded him now; 
Day once risen within, not long to eclipse might 
l>ow. 

Not by cathedral spire, not pomp of song or pro- 
cession, 
Thus the enduring Faith had the steep of his 
heart regained ; 
Not by symbol of creed, by wonder or martyr 
confession. 
Only by witness of work in the nethermost 
depth it reigned. 

Silence the muster let slip; 
Bishop laid finger on lip; 

83 



Lords in their insolence malcontent, and foiled 

of their fray, 
Sneered, "Even more than of old, our liege is 

moody today." 

All as the roaring whirl, which forest and vil- 

lagery shatters, 
Like to the lightning dart, that sunders the 

plaits of the oak. 
Even as ocean's assault, which the Drontheim 
citadel batters, 
Odin had blasted by, and wrath in his foot- 
step woke. 

And as the living Sun, 
Once the wild work is done. 
Quiets the sea and the woodland, enlightens the 

vale and the hill, 
Odin has yielded to Christ, and the spirit of 
Olaf is still. 



84 



EXILE AND RETURN 

Das strenge Hers, es fuhlt sich mild iind weich. 

Florence, then, no more; 

For they would nought of me by ways of mine, 
Nor I of them by theirs ; and all is o'er. 

Soon may I cease to watch, to wander, burn 
and pine. 

Let Arno wind his rill 

Its crimpled span from Apennine to sea, 
Let Fesole o'ergaze the Haunt of 111 ; 

They stand and stream for millions, nevermore 
for me. 

There let the cursed tides 

Of downward-cycling passion roll and foam, 
Thence let the laboring caldron burst her sidesj 

My cradle, memory, ban, my traitress, all but 
home. 

When there, a slumbering lamb, 

I warmed the fold, that was a wolvish den, 
Had one but shown me, what these years I am. 

Could heart of man have borne the dire fore- 
shadowing then ? 

Yet have I raised my head. 

And harvest reaped of many a land and race ; 
Princes have smiled, and strangers bowed in 
dread ; 
And mo-re than these, the muse of heaven has 
lent me grace. 

I saw not there my way 

Through this high voyage of my after wings ; 



85 



The depths and heights of earthless dark and day 
Unrolled not on the eyes content with native 
things. 

I have been taught, that I, 

Raised for a work which all the world should 
own, 
From all the world must drain the broad supply ; 

Not feed the circlinsf sea from one dark fount 



^t) 



alone. 



Let others tell, henceforth, 

When all the reckoning shall at last be sooth, 
If all I had of her be more of worth. 

Or what she wins of me? stand at the balance, 
Truth ! 

Ah, but the flesh must long; 

No flight of years can tame the torrent's will. 
My heart is homeless in this anarch throng; 

Gray, worn, estranged, I crave the nursing 
bosom still. 

Say then they did return, 

And like amending children call me back ; 
Once more the gates unclasped, for which I 
yearn ; 
Were that avenging triumph rather gain or 
lack? 

Who would my welcome bring? 

The looks I loved, would now be gone or 
changed ; 
What hand to labor, or what voice to sing. 
There conld I lift with friends, so long with 
foemen ranged? 



86 



The streets, the walls, the towers. 

Would breathe not of the spheres I now have 
spanned : 
In scenes abroad I nourished inward powers : 
And Heaven will draw more near Ravenna, 
than that land. 

Oh, bitter to the end! 

I weary of that strife, that rancor vain ; 
Will this revengeful spirit never bend, 

And leave the remnants free, that of my task 
remain ? 

So Httle, and so great; 

One song alone, my hundredth and my last, 
Not yet is given me, and the hour is late; 

Lord, wilt thou lead so far, but at the goal to 
blast? 

Yes, there I could not err; 

I held the promise, that at last the Throne 
Should be unveiled before the worshipper; 

Yet mouldering years I pass, nor has my Sov- 
ereign shone. 

And am I thus to close? 

In cloud and tempest, with no sunset peace? 
Not one sweet hour of coronal repose, 

To reconcile my doom, and waft my glad re- 
lease? 

Is this Thy way. All-wise? — 

Forgive me, rebel yet ! have I not learned 
The seed of evil, whence all sorrows rise? 

Oh, cureless heart corrupt, wilt thou be never 
turned ? 



87 



I, who named Florence mad, 

In madness have blasphemed her, for my good ; 
For one wild instant, which my life new-clad, 

Earth and eternal doors have wide before me 
stood. 

How few there were who spurned, 

To all who honored and caressed me there ! 

Their soft pretence, which I with scorn returned, 
Might have restored me home, had I but faced 
them fair. 

Flower of all this earth! 

Florence, Florence, I am with thee now ! 

1 love and bless thee, not for gift or birth. 

But in thy chastening frown my source of weal 
art thou. 

And Father, whom before 

1 knew not thus, nor called Thee by the name, 
For all this boon I thank Thee, and far more, 

That Thou dost purge at last this desperate 
heart of blame. 

The pure shall see their God ; 

For that one vision I have waited long. 
Now may I know the path I left untrod, 

The weltering life compose, and crown the 
shoreward song. 

Much would I haply mend ; 

What if my very Hell were pierced with light ? 
Can Hell be darker than these storms, that end? 

But works are passing now, and I am near 
the night. 



JEHANNE 

Early in 142^. 

Never more sweetly stole the Spring on our 
pastures, woods and hills ; 
But the joy is a light far off. 
Blackbird yielding the bough to wren, long 
mornings and daffodils, 
In their smiling only scoff. 

O, even my downy lambs, whose voice to me was 
the baby's voice. 
On the fern-straw now begin 
The tottering foot-pulse, bounding soon, that the 
Saints in their glee rejoice — • 
My heart no more they win. 

And babe, indeed, of my own warm blood, that 
I fondled on breast and knee — 
Had mother a throb more dear? 
What joy was labor, how glad my life I had 
spent, sweet child, for thee — 
Thou canst not bind me here. 

A pain has gathered about my heart, that is 
dearer far than bliss, 
A cloud more bright than sun. 
For out of it shines that other world, that can 
heal the wounds of this ; 
And even its will be done. 

The word has wandered afar, abroad, and over 
this moaning land, 
That its ruin of woman came, 
And its redemption of woman comes; and the 
word has grown command ; 
On me it has borne its aim. 

8) 



When the cruel share of war uptore the peace 
of our harmless fold^ 
When maiden and man have fled, 
The fear in me to a prayer has turned, the prayer 
to a purpose rolled, 
That vanquishes woe and dread. 

There are two in their straitness crave my aid : 
our leaguer'd city, and King; 
The town and the crown restored, 
I have nought beyond; and my way to these? 
it may lie thro' scorn and sting ; 
Be all in Thy hand, O Lord. 

The Vaire winds caroling into the Meuse, the 
Meuse is away to the sea, 
The water and wind go on, 
And the beast and bird, to their lotted end, they 
pass by the wayside me ; 
It is time I too were gone. 

My prattling mates with their summons come, 
they lesson me as they can ; 
They deem of a secret pain, 
Of a veil between my heart and earth ; and their 
lore is, "Mark our Jehanne: 
She loves ; and where is her swain ?" 

She loves, O maidens, she loves, O youths, your 
Jehanne loves truly and well ; 
Her lover you then shall see, 
When the rays of Heaven are in your souls, in 
your hearts the ocean swell 
Of the mighty hour to be. 

My love is France, my love is God ; and the two 
in my heart are one. 
Is the flower more clear than star? 

90 



Shall the love be less because more great? when 
all these days are done, 
I may be loved, from far. 

Do ye know that love, to love our France, as 
France in her anguish lies? 
Like a child the piteous call, 
Like Holy Mother and Heaven the bond ; to do 
her a sacrifice. 
Is even as Christ in all. 

Poor Frangois, why should he haunt me so? I 
never would do him wrong ; 
But how can he ask a heart 
Which bides no flicker of that wild fire, that is 
all his toil and song? 
Snares hold, where love-knots part? 

Could judges bind, could fathers force, that the 
snow should change to fire? 
All might have spared the pains ; 
The marble would not by rule of court enkindle 
to soft desire. 
Nor the captive bear the chains. 

No heart of woman ? I may have seen some gleam 
where the spark would light ; 
And I know what the flame would be ; 
But the touch that masters this virgin heart, has 
numb'd that archer's might ; 
One bridal holds, for me. 

For I am wedded, and none shall break that 
spousal drawn in Heaven ; 
If kisses and clasps I fail. 
Yet mother's yearning on child unborn has long 
in my bosom striven. 
Till France the deliverance hail. 

91 



I have heard the Voice, it was Angel once, it 
was Mother oi Grace one day : 
Now is the fifth great year, 
Since the unseen world was more to me than 
the world that shapes our clay, 
And Spirit than flesh more near. 

But ah, what answer the voices here, the friends 
who should most be nigh ? 
"O, Jehanne, thou art mad," flout some ; 
'Thy voices are but thy echoing brain," my pa- 
rents and brethren cry ; 
I know not ; I know they come. 

'There are voices of Heav'n to the chosen, true," 
my counseling priest has weighed ; 
"But why should they teach the sword? 
To the cloister aisle they would bend thy vow, 
to the works of sainted maid ;" 
I know not ; I know their word. 

Oh, many have found, and I might else, the af- 
flicted spirit's rest 
In the sweet and hallowed shade ; 
But I am sealed and apart from earth, as ever 
a virgin blest ; 
Like Her, the mother and maid. 

'There are voices of other kingdoms, true," yet 
cloudier thought bespake ; 
"And look to their devilish snares ! 
The Foes of men at their works of hell, such 
angel semblance take" ; 
I know not ; I am theirs. 

O, ye who have taught that the one true note of 
the gracious heart is trust, 
All questioning hurled without, 

92 



Ye who have sung that the heavens are near, that 
they visit the meek and just, 
Knov;^ you, I do not doubt ! 

The Sovereign Will thro' these faint limbs has 
beat, and their nerves are steel : 
Not by the sound of speech, 
But when I fall to the things of sense, the truth 
of my charge I feel ; 
And how shall the faint arm reach? 

When David, low in his youth like me, was fold- 
ing his flocks as I, 
And the lion or bear assailed, 
With the strength that fell'd the giant foe, and 
the godless hosts made fly, 
That sapling arm prevailed. 

When my cherished lamb besought my face, at 
the murderous wolf's advance, 
I rescued, and scared him thence ; 
Is the rescue darker for God to dare, when the 
lamb is bleeding France, 
And to hunt these English hence? 

Oh, yet they are brothers, they are not wolves, 
they bear the Christly name ; 
I will plead the right with them ; 
If they will but heed, so much the more to God 
will be the fame, 
And his love will not condemn. 

But woe if they hear not the voice of right, which 
is voice of only God, 
And hold the unlawful field ; 
Not a thousand Cressys and Agincourts will turn 
the avenging rod. 
This feeble hand shall wield. 

93 



A champion frail at the clash indeed of encoun- 
tering squadrons, I ; 
How shall they know my call ? 
I will weave a flag, of our lilies pure, and the 
Father's sign on high, 
That shall make them heroes all. 

For all are one, one blood of the world, king, 
warrior, shepherd and priest ; 
At plow, church, battle and throne. 
There is One, the Father of all their seed, and 
greatest is all as least. 
If they know, like me, their own. 

O forest oaks, O nestling vales, O meadows of 
Domremie, 
Farewell ; may I come once more ! 
O childhood walks, O garden of God! — O 
mother, I long for thee! 
And the dear God all restore ! 



94 



WOLFE 

Our faithful Admiral is on his post, 

Where downward broadens the calm river- 
sea; 
His lapwing clamors rack the Frenchman's host; 

And leave the darkness and the doom to me. 

My silent skiffs the narrower current brave; 

Their oars are voiceless, and no wanton lights 
Here fret the lapping velvet of the wave ; 

So still, so dark, I tempt these girded heights. 

September gusts at last have left the stars ; 

How faint they ponder, o'er these bickering 
fires! 
What are the gleams of heaven, in earthly wars ? 

What are their leadings, to our dark desires ? 

But mortal flames may kindle to betray; 

But moon and sun may cast illusive hue; 
The stars alone have no deceitful ray, 

They know not beam and shadow, they are 
true. 

They tell me, that my hour indeed is come ; 

These ramparts, that have barred the north so 
long, 
Tonight I scale; there sound our morning drum, 

Thence hurl the foe, and die in battle-throng. 

How sad a lot ! will the kind world acclaim : 

Just on the rise of victory to fall. 
The long-earned meed to fail, the joy, the fame. 

The crown of promised love, of home, of all ! 

What call they sadness? were it life to me. 
The billowy crowd, the blason, the harangue? 

95 



The waste of honors, if such honors be, 

And droop not, envy-cankered, where they 
sprang ? 

Yes, let me search all truth, me and this heaven ; 

To reap the harvest of this latter love. 
For which grim years I have longed, and vowed, 
and striven. 

Would this, even this, my benediction prove? 

The clasp of baby hand, the voice, the smile. 
So rapt me once, I sought my heaven in these ; 

And my sweet Katharine would my spirit wile 
From glory, duty, over wandering seas. 

Now shines her image, of the stars a star ; 

No more she comes to me, nor I to her; 
So calm, so clear, so taintless, and so far ; 

To dream of converse is in wilds to err. 

Let me unbind her picture, parted not 

From this firm bosom, since she housed it there ; 

Companion, bear it back, when the quick shot 
Shall pledge, instead of this, my faith is fair. 

One faith enough ; how could I bind the heart, 
Tuned but to throb with these fierce empires' 
clang ? 

How trim this gaunt abortion, from the smart 
Of tortured sinew and intestine pang? 

I owned both lordships, when in teeming June, 
These whitening crags first rose before my 
prow; 

But this dire season's grapple, moon by moon. 
Leaves but one service in my bosom now. 



96 



One hand there is, that reaches past the sea, 
That smites Antipodes, and cravens kings ; 

One power and purpose Hkest God's decree; 
That league endures, alone of human things. 

This was I sealed and plighted to fulfill. 
My England's hest, by this Canadian wave. 

Long has the mortar ground, and I am still ; 
Paths of her glory lead me to my grave. 

How deep the music of that churchyard lay, 
That my young being with new accent smote, 

Knells through my early-withering frame today. 
And tones all thought, all purpose, to its note ! 

This is no slackening of the cordage stiff ; 

This is the goal, where all is lyre and psalm. 
Let me but once plant foot upon that cliff, 

Beware, unconquered till this hour, Montcalm ! 

My mountain clansmen ! this is not the steep 
Of many a Highland crag your wings have 
scaled ; 
There let the dawning meet that whirlwind sweep 
That storms the bar, where mine and cannon 
failed. 

Peace then, poor fondling throng! spend not on 
me 

Your piteous waters, who have slaked all thirst ; 
Joy in your hearth, your highway, lawn and lea ; 

Blest in your portion, think not mine accurst. 

That were my death, the living of the world ; 

My grave the landed peace, the child, the wife. 
I live but only, where this bolt is hurled ; 

And if it cleave my breast, the more my life. 

97 



CHATHAM, IN SEVENTY-EIGHT 

{The year of Chatham's death; in the midst of 
his meditations on England's disasters, comes 
word of the French treaty with the United 
States.) 

What of the empire I have built so high ? 

What of the foes whom I have trod so 
deep ? 
None had so triumphed in their deed as I ; 
Kings for my laurels weep ; 
Would that in all their boon, they now might 
bring me — sleep! 

Would yet a little more : 

Pain I could war on, like a Bourbon fleet ; 
But not that glory for myself I bore, 
I laid the greatness at my country's feet ; 
And all is like a dream, save only slumber's 
sweet ! 

No more those chambers of the assembled 
realm 
Shall ring vibration to my thunder-peal ; 
No more the hireling shall I scourge and 
whelm, 
Thd patriot, fire and steel 
With daring that the ends of daunted earth shall 
feel. 

For age and sickness have debased my nerve. 

My very purpose quell ; 
My limbs and utterance from their orbit 
swerve 
And bedside counsel has presaged me well, 
Oration's earliest echo now should be — my knelL 



98 



I gained America ; there all is lost, 

All hurled in madness down the gulf of 
wreck. 
I grappled India, now in tempests tost; 
I bowed the Frenchman's neck; 
Now from his dust arisen, he creeps with snare 
and check. 

I was the mighty Commoner ; alone 

I wielded helm and sheet; 
The lire of England in my spirit shone, 
The heart of England in my pulses beat ; 
Now a decrepit lord, they pass me if they meet I 

And what is England ? not this will-be king. 

Sole ruler — to his measure none can shrink ; 
Not these rank Houses, prompt all tunes to 
sing; 
Not these v/ar-chiefs, I think ! 
Did ever nation scale that steepness, thus to sink ? 

My hand they miss? But when my hand was 
there. 
Why made it not all fast? 
Still when I guided, whirlpools mocked my 
care ; 
Too deep the poison through our frame had 
past ; 
I saw the fading splendor, all too bright to last. 

I found no wo-rk but war ; and war has turned 
The sword against me, that I ground so 
keen. 
In our own bosom soon the conflict burned, 
I had spread through earth's wide scene ; 
More ease to conquer worlds, than part the spoil, 
I ween ! 

99 

L&fCJ 



True be the glory, I was first of men 

To lead the laboring State 
Not for the Monarch, but the Citizen; 

Not rank or party, but whole England's 
fate, 
The burden of my toil, center of love and hate. 

But English men and women, are they more. 
For all this luster which my deeds have 
thrown ? 
Have I released the stifling yokes they bore, 
Or added to their moan? 
May not the land I blest, yet curse my name and 
groan ! 

Far in these palaces and gorgeous halls, 

A waft of English fields. 
Of manse and cottage, woods and waterfalls, 
A haunting of the lot which virtue shields. 
Breathe of the peace, which power at its high 
peril yields. 

For there was other in my thoughts than blood ; 

I knew the love of woman and of child ; 
I thought not armaments our only good ; 
I dreamed of pastures mild. 
Where after stormy noonday, life at eve had 
smiled. 

There could I rest me! — But what word is 
here ? 
France, at our back in treacherous arms 
again ? 
I have but one gasp more ; England, give ear ! 
House that I lashed and led, one last refrain ; 
Down with our ancient foe, and count me of the 
slain 1 



lOO 



NAPOLEON IN REGENERATION 

Qiiem tc Dciis esse 
Jussit, et humand qua parte locaiiis cs in re? — 
Respue quod non es. 

At last, a stroke has faU'ri ; Toulon is ours, not 
mine; 

The deed was mine, the brain alone. 
Thus have I aimed and worked, thus waited ; all 
was thine, 

France, or mine island ; nought my own. 

True servant ! all mankind proclaim, and well 
they may. 

All to expend on others' good ! 
Nor I have will nor power to speak or think them 
nay; 

But ponder, what that service would ? 

Is it such holy vow, to grace with toil and sword 
The Gallia of these hell-bound years? 

To gorge the tvrant beast, that crowns but Chaos 
lord, 

Fat on our choicest blood and tears ? 

Shall all her millions, damned these ages to such 
woe, 

Find plenteous peace in these her chiefs? 
And I, one vantage gained, if onward thence I go, 

Shall I assuage, or pile her griefs? 

Let me consider well : the time of parting ways. 

Long wavering toward, is on me now\ 
This heart has hung divided, all my callower 
days ; 

And fashioned, but to fail, its vow. 

Scarce had the boy outreached his infant sports 
and hopes, 

A world had scarce unfolded space 

101 



Beyond Ajaccio streets, ere inward stirs and 
scopes 

Of larger being swelled apace. 

My virtuous parents there, my brethren and my 
friends. 

My struggling Corsa, lore and love, 
Once and again like mists would veil my shining 
ends. 

And to their beats my pulses move. 

What these demanded, I by rule of earth must 
yield : 

Prescription fair, for human kind. 
The soul that mightier arms than these hath come 
to wield. 

Another rule of earth may find. 

A wider bound I welcomed, in the warrior school. 
Where seething Paris fired my west; 

No thwarting checked me there, in iron task and 
rule; 

Food that my fibre nurtured best. 

But when the roar of gathering wrath and ven- 
geance woke. 

When turned the fairy city fiend. 
When all the deeps of Want in lava fountain 
broke. 

And all the hell of earth unscreened ; 

Then, while my spring of youth to manhood 
rounded on, 

That August night by stealth I trod 
The hideous court, that raged and yelled the 
evening gone, 

Now laid in voiceless plea to God: 



102 



The martyr guards, beside the door they fenced 
in vain, 

Stretched moonward in their crusted 
gore- 
Such piteous horror swept this heart that smiles 
at pain, 

I prayed to hear of strife no more ! 

But what of all these qualms? is earth at peace 
for them? 

Not so the doom of man ye waive. 
Not whelmed in rueful tides, but armed their 
strength to stem, 

The lesson that affliction gave. 

Still here, last night, when flame and terror lit 
the bay, 

When bursting anguish wailed ashore, 
One instant almost then, the flood of ruth found 
way, — 

One instant, passion ; and no more. 

And now I know, that nought, henceforth and 
evermore. 

This heart shall overbear one jot; 
Let sweets and softness breathe, hate and destruc- 
tion roar. 

These I regard and cherish not. 

Enough the time o'erpassed, when I have swerved 
and sighed; 

Flowers of the wayside build no wall. 
High portion in the world before me opens wide ; 

Affection there must act but thrall. 

Be this no hardening heart, no black Satanic will ; 
Far more the favor I can spend, 



103 



Hold but my course unfaltering, uncorrupting 
still, 

Than if to every gale I bend. 

The world shall know me soon, and now for weal 
indeed ; 

The ruined frame I will restore; 
All France shall bloom again, where I the season 
lead. 

And Europe bless me, shore to shore. 

For I as none of these, their ways of welfare see. 
And I the power within me feel, 

Not by the sword alone, once they consign to me, 
But rule of peace, their plagues to heal. 

In times of long ago, in old-world's darkling 
morn, 

When gaunt Religion stalked the earth. 
They fabled of the soul, in second period born, 
No more by flesh, but heavenly birth. 

And I may think, their dreams were presage of a 
truth ; 

Wild as the fantasy might wing. 
In this new rise of day, that clears my clouded 
youth, 

I hail my life's authentic spring. 

Farewell, delusive hours ; infirmity, no more ; 

I was not living, as I thought, 
I was but embryon form these twenty years and 
four ; 

Till this proud morning, life was nought. 

What freshness o'er the world, from orient light 
within ! 

My wasting currents rush to one. 

104 



Fair terms with all I now would hold, all spirits 
win; 

So that my destined will be done. 

It could not be for chance, that men confess my 
awe; 

That schoolmates, whom I chilled with 
scorn, 
Would mould in rank to prove my wayward 
scheming law; 

That scarce an eye my own has borne. 

None be my master, none ; man, fashion, realm, 
or writ; 

In me the mastery shareless reigns. 
France? mine Italian lips her tongue could never 
fit; 

Nought bounds me ; all with me remains. 

Forth on my progress then; companionless, un- 
known ; 

None may debar, no hand shall aid. 
Such was my fate's ascription ; sea-girt and alone ; 

My very stars the weird have said. 

An island bore me, nursed my early joy and care, 

An island kingdom is my foe; 
An isle my throne shall stand, in glory lone and 
bare, 

A desert isle my vault below\ 



105 



HOPE OF THE MOOR 

{In> Morocco, at the present time; a traveler 
passing, faint zvith the heat, by the gate of the 
wealthy Moor, who greets him.) 

Not used to suns that quite so steeply mount? 
Come to my shade, fair stranger; cool thy 
brov/ 
With hoarded water from the Martil fount; 
— Here, juice that hath not reacht thy lip 
till now ! 
One more wide roamer of the world art thou, 
Who chase the many, and the One forbear? 
Repose thee, nor inquire ; 
I know thy soul's desire : 
Our lives thy probe would sound, our thoughts, 
our prayer ; 
Well, I am taught, my all with all who crave, to 
share. 



This vale of Afric, where my fathers dwelt 

Five thousand moons, from Atlas to the sea, 
The mosque and altar, where my fathers knelt. 
Are gracious to mine eye, sweet to my knee ; 
Great Allah not the least has cared for me ; 
The folk revere me, and the glebe sustains. 
Yet, search but down my breast, 
The bottom knows no rest ; 
Not as the ocean, tost by winds and rains 
But on its upward face, calm in its deep remains. 

I never saw another shore than this ; 

No other mountains narrowed skies of mine ; 
Save in these walks, I know not earthly bliss ; 

Here is the sun, the orange and the vine ; 

The Lord is here, the Prophet and his line ; 
No rarer lights could lie, no lovelier hues; 

1 06 



Still must they ever seem 
But like a land I dream, 
Still in a clime unseen dissolve their views — 
Fez, were I em.ir there, but waste to Andaluz. 

I know them, though mine eyes have not be- 
held, 
The groves and highlands, and the walls and 
towers ; 
I breathe it, while my breast hath never swelled 
With balmy air of those elysian bowers, 
The promised and once portioned land of 
ours ; 
I hear them, waters I have voyaged not ; 
There is the world for me. 
No world I touch or see. 
But glories of the faithful people's lot. 
Our ow^n and unpossessed, illusion unforgot 

O city O'f the grave, O lost Granada, 

Where is thy golden throne, polluted queen? 
O sun-rills, turning, down the pure Nevada, 
Eternal whiteness to eternal green ! 
Are these the things that we have never 
seen ? 
Then sight is dark beside a clearer sense : 
The fields that fold us here. 
Are not so sure and near 
As that sad heritage, wide journeys hence, - 
Where-tow'rd our spirit strains in yearning im- 
potence. 

O vain Alhamra, crown of all the West, 

What giaour thy virgin fastness now defiles ? 
O stronghold, one with scarp and mountain 
crest, 
The heart of Islam beat within thy piles ! 
O colummed fountains and embroidered 
aisles, 

107 



Wave acting marble, marble wave and flower ; 
And, wreathing over all. 
Deep court and starry hall. 
Like breaths of Allah through subaltern power. 
The Moslem Word, exalting humbled arch and 
tower ! 

And storied Cordova, where Guadalquivir 

Throbs like a conquered maiden heart below ; 
And Seville, painting on the expanded river 
The ravisht mosque, the minster's gloom and 

glow ; 
And lawns, our paradise of long ago — 
Seest thou, my kindly guest, this umbered key ? 
This clencht and bony scroll. 
That, when my hands unroll, 
Clings, like a trusty warder, wilt thou see? 
The instruments are these, of lordship there with 
me? 

For God, who raised the Prophet from his tent. 
And bore the Word on conquering wings 
afar, 
Who those chaste legions to Atlantic sent. 
Where matchless triumph of enlarging War 
To more victorious Peace resigned his car, 
Could never His own witness bring to shame ; 
And those, who loved and served. 
From no commandment swerved, 
Leave naked to the scorners of His name ; 
That glory fill the Heavens, and earth despise the 
claim ? 

And what, with all their myriads and their 
might, 
Have these of Nazareth, to vie with those ? 
The motley numbers of the Cross affright 
The world with storm, with endless clang of 
foes, 

io8 



And aimless ; all, themselves and each op- 
pose ; 
Their Prince of Peace leaves all in war at last ; 
Their cloven godheads tell 
What heathen lingerings dwell 
With souls that scarce their savage slough have 
cast; 
Our Truth no change endures, hereafter, now, or 
past. 

And thou, despoiier of our ancient seat, 

Dire nation, slandering ev'n the Gheber 
name! 
Blood is thy water, Spain, man's flesh thy 
meat. 
Murder thy worship, cruelty thy game! 
Your Master, whom our Master shrined in 
fame, 
Taught, life of man be goodness, love the way ; 
They who the sword should take, 
Must perish for its sake : 
We have our Teacher ; world, arise and say, 
Who further from their lore have wandered, we 
or they? 

Judge of all worlds and seasons, haste the 
hour! 
Vengeance is thine ; thine also to forgive. - 
Some region, wasted by this godless Power, 
Send forth the rod, wherein Thy right shall 

live! 
She that hath hunted, now be fugitive ! 
Yield back their Eden to Thy banisht sons ; 
Where Islam, purest clad, 
Made plain and city glad, 
Proclaim Thy favor to Thy loyal ones. 
Till all abide Thy law, while heaven her circuit 
runs. 

109 



SPAIN'S OWN STORY 

Seven ages had the hfe of man, 
And sev'n the world, they used to say ; 

But more by far than these are mine, 
From first memorial day. 

When ships of Tarshish passed my Strait, 
When old Ulysses by me steered. 

When Tyre her sea-net round me cast, 
My earliest dawn appeared. 

When Rome and Carthage, giants grown. 
Their combat joined on wave and shore, 

In storm I gained my second age, 
A spoil they tramped and tore. 

Then, stubborn with my wild-wood tribes. 
Those conquering legions long I stayed; 

And Scipio, Pompey, Caesar marched. 
Ere I their mercy prayed. 

One fair fourth era, peace at last. 
Came with the blessed Christ awhile ; 

And my rude forest, field and hill. 
Began to bloom and smile. 

Now many a sage, that autumn age. 

Now wealth of mart and soul were mine ; 

Now Lucan fierce, calm Seneca, 
And Trajan's sceptred line. 

But winter on that harvest rolled ; 

Clouds of the North, engendering waste. 
Of Suabian horde and Vandal hoof, 

Mv ancient lines effaced. 



no 



Yet even of these, new blood and mould, 
I took my stamp for after times ; 

And Roman turned to Gothic stem. 
Renewed of hardier climes. 

My sixth was like to be my last; 

More swift, more dread than German host, 
Swarmed from another pole the Moor, 

Till realm and Rood were lost. 

But in my northward mountain holds, 

A seed of valor and of truth 
Kept fast the faith by Moslem whelmed. 

And promised greener youth. 

A seventh and strife-worn age drew on. 
That fixed my lineaments henceforth. 

Where ensigns met like fire and frost. 
Embattling South and North. 

Full many a hundred warring years 
Each kingdom sinewed and composed. 

Till, union leaguing all at last. 
One lordly state they closed. 

Now did my glory soar the sky ! 

An age of triumph and of fame, 
When worlds beheld my standards fly. 

That knew not Europe's name. 

My love was Danger, my delight 
The toil that daunted human kind ; 

Who even but bragged of strength like mine i^ 
Such manner, and such mind? 



ill 



I almost ruled each side the world; 

What were my following ages then ? 
All unaware, I slipped my grasp, 

And lost the lead of men. 

I will not thread the weary course, 
Not partings of the barren hours ; 

Since fell the rein from palsied hand, 
And soul unthroned her powers. 

My sister nations, whom I held 

Scarce worthier than my peasant thralls. 
Have left me far and faint behind, 

And my last garland falls. 

Yet was I faithful^ more than all, 

To rule and scepter, church and creed ; 

Was this my faith my source of ill? 
My Word obscured my deed? 

I strove for Christ, but strove amiss ; 

Upward I looked, but made my God ; 
I turned His love to human hate. 

He turned my staff to rod. 

I claimed His blessing mine alone. 
And thought not on my earthly ways. 

To make them wise, in rule of right, 
Which had been all His praise. 

My kings and lords were full of pride, 
My people toiled in gloom and chain. 

One way to urge the beast I knew. 
Add ever to his pain. 



112 



My people ! was not there the curse, 
That Hke a millstone bore me down ? 

My people ! call them from their tomb, 
Yet may I know my crown ! 

My people ! when the tyrant foe 
My fenceless valleys overrode, 

Did not their uncommanded rise 
First his own doom forebode ? 

Hurl to the dust my castled towers, 
Shake to the wind my tattered pall ; 

Let nobles quit the helm they wrecked, 
Try once the right of all ! 

I am not dead, I cannot die — 

How could I mourn my own decay ? 

This life that wails me, let it rise. 
And roll the stone away! 



113 



MAN AND NATURE 



YOUTH 

It is youth, when the thing that we hear and see, 

We have heard not or seen before ; 
It is youth, when the wave of the heart is free, 

And rolls to a fairy shore. 
It is youth, when the image of simplest things 

In colors of Eden stands, 
When Memory soars on Fancy's wings. 

And when Time runs golden sands. 
And such, O Lady, the hour with you, 

That morn in your father's hall. 
Where still September was poring through, 

With his beam on the pensive wall. 
And I might not stay, and I could not go, 

I had spoken the word in truth. 
And I wished it all were forever so. 

For I breathed eternal youth. 



YESTERDAY 

How tender was the step, fair day, 
You stole upon my parting rest! 
How sweet the hand you sought to lay, 
I thought I could not but obey, — 
''Now for our best!" 

Your cheeks were then the climbing rose, 

Your breath the wave of mountain woods. 
Serene and still your voice arose, 
To lull repinings in repose, 

And vanquish moods. 

What things with you I might have wrought, 

What hours of love we might have worn ! 
Now, like an unaccomplished thought^ 
Relapsing to despair and nought. 
You pass forlorn. 

117 



THE BEAUTY OF THE UNAKAS 

The Unaka mountains, the bound are we, 
Of CaroHna and Tennessee ; 
We look to the east on the Old North State, 
We look tO! the west on her child and mate. 
We have many a surge, blue rolled in air. 
We have many a glory and favor rare. 
But the pride of our treasure we share with none, 
Beauty of Unaka hills alone. 
It is not the flower, on the desert's crest. 
Nor wood-locked meadow, the streamlet's nest; 
It is not where the bloom and the brightness pass 
To the cheek and eye of the mountain lass ; 
But reach the tops, where ye wist but stone, 
From Hiawassee to northmost Roan, 
And, like the smile from the kindly heart. 
That gladdens where deeds can find no part. 
The slopes and the shrunken firs above. 
The Grass lies level, and breathes of love. 
Far down the panther and bear may roam, 
In the heavenward lawn is the lamb at home. 
There, brow to dry, shall the pilgrim lie. 
With back to earth, and with face to sky. 
The builder of these, their crown must know ; 
He maketh grass on the mountains grow. 



A TRUANT 

A seraph, whom God on his errand sent. 

Found way to this world of ours, 
And in arbors of dalliance roving went. 

And wreathed him in rainbow flowers. 

With a voice as of Love, and a swooning flute. 
He gathered a languorous throng, 

And he warbled of heaven, its gold and fruit, 
Its palaces, robes and song. 

ii8 



Till the shadows approaching, warned him home ; 

And he bent on his task at last ; 
But his way was lost. From his fruitless roam, 

He returned ; and the Gates were fast. 

"O poet who singest of poets," replied 
The Voice that had charged him forth, 

"Thy freedom may wander these walls outside ; 
Thou art neither for heaven nor earth." 



TRANSIENT AND PERMANENT 

The old tune of Scotland, the Bonnie Dundee, 
As I walked to my love-lot, went crooning with 

me; 
For the red fruit had ripened, the bloom was 

no more, 
I must know of my fate ere the twilight be o'er. 

But my true-love was false-love, she would not 

of me; 
For the joy of another she flouted my plea; 
And the stem of six years in one moment was 

bare ; 
Then I turned, and I wandered ; and hummed the 

old air. 

And my chamber embraced me, with rest as it 
might ; 

And I rose on the morning, and fronted the light ; 

I had stepped from my bondage, up, forward 
and free ; 

And there murmured within me the Bonnie Dun- 
dee. 



119 



THE TENANT 
I. 

I lived, one time, in the strangest house ; 

I entered it some soft morn of Spring ; 

I cannot remember the opening ; 

But only^ the birds began to sing, 
And the chambers one by one to rouse. 
The frontward rang from the first and gleamed ; 
The inner lay in the dark and dreamed. 
Till their time should awaken them too to air; 
And they were the deepest and richest there ; 
One, over the rest, the mansion's throne. 
Where all its order was framed alone. 

11. 

Well, years drew' over my canny house. 

And the more I noted, the more I mused ; 
It wore not, but grew, forever used. 
It rallied, wherever assailed or bruised, 
In toil unbending, or gay carouse ; 
Those chambers widened, as of themselves. 
The halls and arches, the vaults and shelves; 
And marvels so^ many the closets held, 
Such law constricted and life outwelled, 
I learned to fancy, it might rehearse, 
On a stage so little, the universe. 
And ever I spent maturer care 
To hold my lodging in safe repair, 
As I strove, communing long, to find 
In that fair building the builder's mind. 

III. 

But the wonder at last befel my house, 

More strange than all of the vernal prime ; 
It had fitted myself, that early time ; 
It was not wearied with stain or grime, 

120 



With rift or reeling, with mould or mouse ; 

But now, when so long those cares I spent 

To cleanse the blemish, to heal the rent, 

I but found, in the home I would shape so true, 

More alien every year I grew. 

It would not yield as before to me 

The instant claim of its service free ; 

It vexed me without, it was gnawn within, 

I felt the old trusty joints unpin. 

With buttress the mouldered walls I propped. 

Door cumbered, and thickening window stopped ; 

There was ever a fall^ and ever a strain 

That of old I knew not ; I called it Pain ; 

And all my endeavor but set it clear 

That I and my dwelling were not so near. 

However the place might fix my love. 

Resistance palled ; it was time to move. 

And strange again, of my house I knew, 

But nought of myself, what would ensue ! 

Yet stranger, the word of those who say 

That the two are one, as they go or stay. 

TOURIST'S GUIDE 

Come to the August hills, look down the clifif; 

Let ocean breathings purge thy grime away ; 

Launch on the forest-bosomed lake thy skiff; 

And man's high work survey. 

Yet come provided, lest thou lose thy pain ; 

Not much, but needful ; one poor glass forgot, 
The denser cloth, the purse, thy cost is vain. 
The glory all a blot. 

Still more concerning, know thou what to leave ; 

If all the riches, that these highways throng, 
Shall crown with blessing, nor with bane deceive. 
Bring not a self along. 

121 



A TALE OF LOVES 

Two lovers went by, the earth and the sky ; 

Their touches were soft and fond ; 
They murmured and clasped, they circled me 
nigh, 

They fleeted to realms beyond. 
And I thought as I knew her, that Earth was 
truer. 

And Sky was a sad coquet ; 
A soothfast maid and a moody wooer. 

But they have not parted yet. 

For many a day there would scarce one ray 

Of grace from his feature shine ; 
But the showers grew flowers where the maiden 
lay, 

And she counted him still divine; 
There were tempests rolled, there was iron cold. 

That clouded her cheeks or chilled ; 
But her smile was sweet and serene of old. 

Whenever the blasts were stilled. 

There is, when her lover from far above her. 
Comes down at her side to rest ; 

When the fitful mists that around him hover. 
Are dew on her virgin breast; 

When at April, showers that in other hours 
Were brewed of the vault aloft, 

Now gather drops in her very bowers, 
, And thence is their fall so soft. 

There is, when the maid from her vale and 
shade, 

Ascends to her loved one's height; 
When the clouds once more that in azure played, 

Come round her in damp and light; 



122 



Her fields are bare in the moteless air, 
And her stemless flowers are dim : 

When he came to her, it was pleasant there, 
But nobler, when she to him. 



SUCCESS AT LAST 

He swept like fire the Italian hills and plains, 

The old Throne tumbled, in his swift careers, 
He shook the Pyramid, who Time disdains, 

And broke the slumber of six thousand years ; 
The seat, that stanchest Frederic built so late, 

Sank shattering, and the stubborn Russian 
bowed ; 
And all but rumbled as a guideless Fate, 

Swelled like the storm^ and vanisht like its 
cloud. 
Last, on his penal isle, one armless mind, 

The conquered conqueror vanquisht every foe ; 
The martyr-legend made the nations kind ; 

He taught the story that the world should 
know. 
Still once again shone out the truth divine: 
Not till thou leave the world^ the world is thine. 



"Life is a dream, its little gleam 
Is rounded with a sleep," 

The sages chant, and I might deem 
Their solemn thought full deep, 

If I but knew, what is a dream ; 
Their path I cannot keep : 

More pregnant far to me it seems, 

How much of life is in our dreams. 



123 



ON THE STUDY TABLE 

It is good to see your face, Brother Skull! 

Not for beauty or for grace, Brother Skull ; 
Were it beauty it might fade. 
Were it brightness it might shade, 

But you never lose your place. Brother Skull ! 

In the spring a field is fair. Visage gray ; 
In the autumn it is bare. Visage gray; 

You are inward polar star. 

Summer, winter, there you are, 
Daylight, midnight, you are there, Visage gray. 

None your broken vow shall weep, Soul of truth ; 
You are promise that will keep. Soul of truth ; 

What you tell me I shall be. 

That is fairly sure for me ; 
You are mortgage sound and cheap. Soul of 
truth. 

You are mirror of the mind, quiet Guest; 
You are glass in which I find, quiet Guest, 

Not my fashion of today. 

But a little while away, 
And I follow fast behind, quiet Guest! 

Every morning when we meet, Friend o' mine, 
Every evening when we greet, Friend o' mine. 

We a little nearer draw. 

Than we were when last we saw. 
And I find it rather sweet. Friend o' mine ! 

I can easy understand. Brother Skull, 

Why they kept you near at hand^ Brother Skull, 

In the holy times of old ; 

Not for something hard and cold. 
But you seemed a sign of land. Brother Skull. 

124 



THE SPY 

I have often, in my learnings, 
In my unaccounted turnings, 
Peered within the deep concernings 

Of my fellow-minds ; 
But the utmost of my labors 
In the vineyard of my neighbors. 
Never brought me home the gleaning 
Self-detection finds. 

If the choicest bits of scandal 
You would most securely handle, 
If the sport shall pay the candle. 

Cast a glance within ; 
There, what years of overweening 
Tumble, in a thought's unscreening, 
How much sought afar shall meet 3^ou, 

Folly, fear, and sin ! 

Yet not only pits of darkness. 
Skeletons in wary starkness. 
Doubt's impenetrable murkness. 

Fill the vessel dim ; 
Many a glimpse therein shall greet you. 
Many a guest who may entreat you. 
Whose long night has burst in morning. 

To an hour with him. 

There what captive shapes unnumbered. 
Whose retreat has closed and slumbered. 
Under adding years encumbered, 

Wait the signal wand ; 
Then, unreckoned and unwarning, 
These in beauty's own adorning, 
These with nightmare horror stricken. 

Forth erect they stand. 



125 



From the trackless-wandering spirit, 
From the myriad breaths that stir it, 
From the blood-kins we inherit 

Through our million sires, 
Who can say what records thicken, 
Watching when the lamp shall quicken 
All the worst and all the best there. 
By unquenching fires! 

All the world and all its riches 
There may brood in vaulted niches. 
Till the word of mystery witches 

Each from secret shelf; 
All the universe may nest there; 
Pry not for it, let it rest there, 

Till it rouse itself! 

SHADOW MARKET 

You the story doubtless know. 
Handed on from Chamisso : 
If the stranger, peaked and famined, 
(Toe or temple not examined,) 
Beg you, for astounding price. 
Thing so idle and so nice. 
You have never used it yet, 
Should the of¥er not be met? 
Is not this the soul of trade. 
Profit on both parties made? 
So you get the bin of gold. 
He your shadow, soft-uproUed. 
Where can any damage be? 
Are you not one shade more free? 
Only, you have no more place 
In the walks of human race. 
Men can bear with cloudiest blot ; 
Man without a shadow, not. 
All the sad result I waive ; 
Too much freedom sealed the slave. 

126 



O glory of modern time far-sought, 

O cradle of all my nursling thought, 

Period of tyranny, murk and schism, 

Hope of the ages. Liberalism! 

We craved you long, and we have you now ; 

Yours is the guidance ; and where, and how ? 

Once there had risen a worshipped light ; 

Never such orb looked forth from night; 

While it was low on its azure way, 

Long the portentous shadows lay; 
Persecution, and Superstition, 
Hell, and its forecourt Inquisition, 
Too shadowy lest that darkness be ; 
Science fettered, and priestcraft free ; 

By every bar, the rigid glooms 
Drawn to one giant form attest. 

What sun of righteousness illumes. 

What substance there the stamp hath pressed. 

Now, line by line of the umbered ground 

In our light diffused no more is found ; 

And all mankind is at large, we hold. 

And cheap for dear is our shadow' sold. 

What good of the hideous darkness ? Nay, 

All grant, that the ill we scarce can say; 

Then roll it forth, and the riches leave ; 

May never the balance, I pray, deceive. 



THE GREAT AND THE GREATEST 

Ye seraph minstrels of the past, 

Be near, but not too near ! 
Nor quench those whispers, in your blast. 

More needful yet to hear. 
Your wings upbear me from the earth, 

But not into the Heaven ; 
The quickening fire must find its birth 

Where mortal has not striven. 

127 



SEARCH FOR THE WORLD 

Soft in his chair the learner sat ; 

He said, "The world is beautiful; 
I wonder what they would be at, 

Who call it dark and dull ?" 
Replied the master, 'Thou shalt see; 
The world thou knowst not; follow me." 

The guide his tender listener led 

Where hideous rags half-clothed a folk 

Who sacked the dust, and moaned for bread ; 
And thence his moral spoke : 

'Ts this thy world of beauty?" "No; 

Lead on, the world explore and show." 

He led where murder aimed his thrust. 
Where tyrant power the mild oppressed, 

Where grief bewailed, where wallowed lust, 
Where sickness prayed to Rest; 

"And hast thou thought on these ?" he hurled. 

"I see them ; let me see the world." 

When all his discord, pain and crime 

He taught, and still his charge would stray, 

He came to ruins more sublime : 
A battle-field next day; 

A ravaged land, a famined town; 

A plague, that mankind rotted down. 

"Now cast thy vision round, and tell ; 

Thou seest the world ; so very fair ?" 
"What have I seen ? it may be hell ; 

The world, I find not there. 
Gleams I have seen, but not from thee ; 
My world, may none reveal but me." 



128 



THE REAL GHOST 

A spirit was walking a moonless night, 
And it breathed a tremor of strange affright, 

Wherever they felt it pass. 
But it knew not of this, for it roamed at ease. 
By cities, waters, and flowery leas. 
It shone in the fire-flies, rocked in the trees, 

Assisted to dew the grass. 

Its life was as native^, as fair, as fresh. 
As any embowered in wall of flesh. 

For such was the life they led; 
Till it heard the sighing of Adelaide, 
And when it considered the love-lorn maid, 
"A ghost!" it panted, 'T feel afraid;" 

And back to its churchyard fled. 

"What ails you ?" queried a friendly sprite ; 
"Has Tallmadge come to appall your sight?" 

"O, not by a thousand miles. 
A girl I saw, for a ghost I took; 
I could tell by her famishing, far-off look. 
That her lovely figure was only spook, 

And her soul was in distant isles." 



THE RAPE OF VIRTUE 

Loose-hearted Ovid yet could find, 
"Virtue is female, and she likes her kind." 

But that most fair of maidhood pure. 
Must woman's perils and assaults endure. 

Man in his bruteship violates 
Virtue herself as her defenceless mates. 

When comes the unhallowed seed to birth, 
One more Fanatic has maligned his earth. 

129 



THE RADICAL 

We are out for the newest of all the new; 

It is not to change a law, 
It is not to abolish a wrong- or two, 

Nor to hold a power in awe ; 
Mere turning ourselves in the bed we heat, 
But never making it, fresh and sweet. 

We have heard so much of the world's reform. 

If a paper were only sealed, 
If only a poll we could take by storm. 

If a trade were barred the field. 
We begin to tire of the cure-all stufif^ 
And doubt if the measures have depth enough. 

We will found a party, that never yet 

Solicited human vote ; 
Who will think on the good before them set, 

Not dream on the good remote ; 
To whom old Earth is so kind a mother, 
They tend her rather, than scheme another. 

For we are the bold reformers, we, 

Who would keep the slow world's gain; 
Who find it a glorious thing to be. 

And the ages not in vain ; 
Who love the law and who like the rule ; 
Who call not our abler, knave or fool. 

We would lead the erring, the wounded heal, 
We would lend the poor a hand, 

We would purge the stains of the Commonweal 
To a new-found Holy Land ; 

And these when we gird ourselves to do^, 

We look, what means have been tested true. 



130 



So deep to the roots of the ill we go, 
We never could search afar, 

To find in another field the foe, 

Who will keep us in holy war ; 

It is such a worlds we are hardly sure 

Of malady save in ourselves to cure. 



MASTER AND SLAVE 

Unrighteous lot ! shall the one go wide, 
Lord of himself and of souls beside. 
Must valley and hill but gorge his pride, 

All nature attend his good? 
And the other, in that same image born. 
Live, this man's chattel and all men's scorn, 
Captivity hopeless on earth to mourn ; 
Ls this as their Maker would? 

Up, Justice! low the usurper lay; 
Compound with his robbery not one day! 
Tear the false title ! And well ye may, 

Were master and slave not one. 
They are but the parts I take by turns ; 
Now glorying freedom her limit spurns, 
Now grovefiing bondage waiU and yearns ; 
In two, it is quickl}^ done. 



131 



PENTHOLATRY 

''I joy to see you," one I knew 
Hailed one that entering came ; 

''What all this year has gone with you ? 
I almost lose your name." 

It was a dear good soul that spoke ; 

He loved his neighbor, and his joke ; 

I could have liked him, heart of oak ! 
But dulness was his blame. 

The Stranger was of rarer mould : 

A poet, every gleam ; 
No sordid mark his glance controlled ; 

His beins* was a dream. 
The clustered locks his shoulder swept; 
His voice and hand such measure kept 
As frenzy in her buskin stept ; 

Or wine the muse m.ight seem. 

The speeding train a thousand scenes 

Into one action crushed, 
Where hills and rivers, streets and greens 

In fierce procession rushed ; 
In vain they wooed regard of mine ; 
That stress alone compelled my eyne ; 
That countering of the rude and fine, 

All other j anglings hushed. 

"I am as ever," he replied, 

"The first of Sorrow's train." 

"Has any of your kinfolk died ?" 
Pursued the inquirer vain. 

"Death ? what is earth, but his grim lair ?" 

Rejoined the minstrel of despair ; 

"Why ask of one, who enters there, 
Where all pour on amain?" 



132 



''But yet methinks enough are live," 

Inferred my stolid friend, 
"To keep us company who survive, 

And cheer us to our end." 
''What call ye cheer?" bemoaned the bard, 
"On life's dark voyage evil-starred? 
Where is your comfort or reward 

For love and pains ye spend?" 

"A many comforts," once again 

He said, "I am sure we find ; 

And joy, I think, outvalues pain. 
If all were of my mind," 

"Joy, where?" the seer of grief required; 

"And were your spirits with vision fired, 

Ye would find the good ye have all desired 
But the bloom to a bitter rind. 

"For of all your earthly millions, tell 

Of but one with happy lot ! 
When ye sing it of children, ye know well 

It is but that your own are not. 
Or is mirth, or humor, exceeding fair? 
Is your Swift a blessedness, or Voltaire, 
For all the laughter and wit they flare. 

Or but misery? well ye wot. 

"And he of the shallow Pickwick sports, 

Do ye deem that his grin was cheer ? 

But follow him where his heart resorts. 
And sorrow is ever near. 

His quips, if ye knew, are of suffering bought ; 

Our brightest frolic with pain is fraught; 

For with travail forth are my own jests brought, 
And sadness to those who hear. 

"The harp of Nature is tuned to woe. 

With but minor and m.ajor strings; 

133 



And love is pang, and fruition show, 

As the whole of my chorus sings. 

All pleasure bleeds at its fullest vein, 

But of bestial sort, and that were stain ; 

The song of birds is their cry of pain, 

Sore toil on their throbbing wings. 

"Ye fancy the flit and the chirp are gay, 
For the figure of glee they fill ; 

But the keys in torture as quickly play 
As ever delight could thrill. 

The cricket squeals as a thing in gripe, 

Like moaning sickness the midges pipe ; 

Yet sadder the wave-tribes, woe's own type. 
Who voiceless endure their ill. 

"In the sighing forest, the tear-hung flower. 
Lies chambered a dum.b regret ; 

And the shore and sea, and the wind and shower, 
To the same sad strain are set. 

If our ears could reach it, the orbs above 

To a mourning cadence their progress move ; 

And I hear that in Heaven's own light and love, 
We shall wear our sorrows yet." 

He spake, and the other nodded, once 
And again, to the purport deep ; 

I hearkened, and hoped the brave response, 
Or I must apart and weep ; 

For an ice on my heart had crept the while ; 

But never an answer, frown or smile. 

Of the comrade tokened, who many a mile, 
From Sorrow appealed to Sleep. 



134 



THE PASSING OF POESY 

Thou and I must leave the world, they tell me ; 

For if thou retire thee, I am not ; 
Accident thenceforth may buy or sell me, 
Earth for me will bear no lot. 

Every nation sings awhile, then reasons ; 
And the chanting falls to level speech. 
Flower and warbler have their early seasons ; 
Riper hour shall wiser teach. 

Now the world is all one people growing ; 
Now their ancient melodies are past. 
One by one we saw them in their blowing ; 
We have seen the last. 

Utterance now shall drop the faded glitter 

Useless numbers bind on infant feet ; 
Dante shall not prattle, Shakespeare twitter^ 
In the time complete. 

Well ; and if the world can do without us, 
We may do without the world as well. 
Let us wrap the minstrel robes about us, 
In our own dominion dwell. 

But a many springs have boomed and faded ; 
Yet old Earth had ever one more spring. 
Amaranth will blossom, sunned or shaded; 

Youth shall rise, and youth will sing. 

When the stars in measure cease their dances. 
When the days no more by number flow, 
And when Love shall end her rhyme of glances, 
Thou and I may go. 



135 



PAINTING 

An angel came, of her rank the fairest ; 

Holy and sweet was her charge, and bright. 
''The vision of heaven henceforth thou sharest, 

Earth," she said, "in m}- shapes of light." 

And the tables of wood and of stone, rude- 
grounded. 

Smooth of old, she has brushed aside ; 
On her fresh-knit canvas arise, full rounded, 

Forms that she knew, where the gods abide. 

i 

The keen frame drank of the glows and shading. 

Promised to bear them abreast with time. 
The angel knew but of things unfading ; 

Not the waste of the nether clime. 

The ages went, and the ages wondered ; 

Filled their heart with the gleam divine ; 
And stamped the wrinkle, and dimmed, and sun- 
dered. 

Many a feature, and gracious line. 

The angel sighed to her sovran Master, 
"O my Lord, have I wrought in vain? 

Regard and pity our dull disaster ; 
Faints our lustre, nor springs again." 

''Not thine were the work," said the Unmis- 
taking, 

"Should it have lasted, as mine alone. 
I sent but a dawn, for m.an's awakin^e;- ; 

Fulness of dav makes all his own." 



136 



MY FAITHFUL 

She fled me far, and left me 

A lonely hour and gray, 

And all the light she reft me 

Went on her flowery way ; 

She gave the world, the festal throng. 

The beauties that with me belong; 

I could not say her nay. 

She poured on mirths and dances 

The music of her soul, 
The orchestra's expanses. 
The pomp of curtain's roll; 
And many a glance of love was bent. 
And many a lure of soft intent 
By touch and murmur stole. 

She banquets, rides and revels, 

I muse and toil alone ; 
She treads the grassy levels, 
I sit like churchyard stone; 
Her eyes are lit with mutual ray, 
Mine over ink-lines woo decay, 
She triumphs, I bemoan. 

The curtain, downward sund'ring, 

Parts off the acted scene. 
The bands remit their thund'ring. 
The dancers pause between ; 
She clasps her tablets, and apart. 
Unveils to only me her heart. 
My darling, bride and queen. 



137 



MONSTRUM HORRENDUM 

Farewell Titan, Gorgon, Typhon ; 
Follow, ogre, fiend and gryphon ; 

Earth is phantom-free. 
Now no more of Rumor, even. 
In her stature reaching heaven, 

Horrible to see. 



Ear of childhood, be not daunted 
By a region spectre-haunted, 

Slandering gracious night ; 
Soon shall our deliverance threaten 
Very kingdom of old Satan, 
And make all things light. 

Yet a pause ; v/ide-v/orld inspection, 
Where no shape can bar detection, 

Still one monster finds ; 
And, in wonder stop to scan it. 
Vast it swells to all the planet. 

Though more thin than winds. 

None so armed with goblin terror. 
Scared the dreams of ancient error, 

None so strange of mood ; 
And who once hath bowed before it, 
Thence forever must adore it. 

May it but be wooed. 

Let him jumble wooed and wooer^, 
Let him call the ghoul pursuer, 

Let him scorn aloud; 
All the world will scoff the scoffer. 
All will read, but one more offer, 

On that altar proud. 



138 



Yet is this last portent, brothers, 
More at last than all the others ? 

Aught but nightmare old, 
Where but sloth has forged the monster; 
When the man has made but one stir, 

Off the load has rolled? 

Mighty Public! I would dread you. 
Quite as all who fleeched or fled you, 

Once I saw you true : 
But my eyes have never found you ; 
Man and woman rose around you. 

Always hiding you. 



Every morning we are children, every noon in 

manhood's bloom, 
Every evening, age is onward, comes the darkness 

with our tomb. 
Art thou not beyond thy lesson, on thy waking let 

it watch ; 
When the opening thought is tender, there the 

rein and signal catch ; 
Give thy action to the midday, arm be strong and 

heart be bold ; 
Find the things that make for quiet, when the 

hour is gray and old. 



139 



MISSION 

Now while the hour is brightening, now the 

armor on ! 
Joy of the blossoms whitening, of the winter 

gone! 
High on the swells of rapture, anchor lift and 

ride ; 
Souls to redeem from capture, welcome flood of 

tide; 
O the broad exultation, laboring not for one. 
But for a kindling nation, for new Earth begun ! 
Step to your freedom, brethren, yours be all my 

blood ; 
Long was the chain untethering, long the barrier 

stood ; 
But in the great deliverance this fresh day pro- 
claims, 
Let ages feel the severance of all our bonds and 

shames. 

Hail to the mighty day; 
On, while we may. 

Well do I know the hollow, well the mire and 

slime, 
That such tide must follow, that its crest shall 

climb ; 
Well the back recoiling, ghastly ebb and flat. 
Scorn of all our toiling, owl where eagle sat; 
Well the dism^al wringing, well the wild abuse 
Round our progress clinging, den and cage let 

loose ; 
Well the grim dominion Victory shall claim. 
When her braggart minion rules but in her name ; 
That in ages after, though our mark attained. 
Shame shall rise and laughter, doubts if aught 

were gained ; 



140 



That my own sad sentence, ere the day shall fall, 
May be nigh repentance that I moved at all ; 
So clouds the rising day ; 
On, while me may. 



Ah, dim and glancing vital web, 
Ah, crested flow and gasping ebb, 

Under the sun ! 
A day swelled o'er with joy of love, 
A day through long--houred anguish drove. 
And these were one. 



141 



THE LOST LOVE 

Death has come bridegroom unto many a bride, 

And spousal to the groom ; 
No rivalry could wrest that suit aside, 

No plea refrain the doom. 

The will of power, the power of will, have thrust 

Their bars across Love's road ; 
The rigid mandate, and the wayward gust, 

His May-tide harvest mowed. 

Chance may have warped the plighted sotuls 
apart, 
Till earthly access closed ; 
Some crossing witch-light may have wiled a 
heart 
From where its home reposed. 

Despair of answer has one mind possessed, 

Till 'surance came too late ; 
The lawful bond has one too soon oppressed. 

Ere toucht the spirit's mate. 

But thou, poor comrade ! what a dole was thine. 

Whom fortune, unforborne, 
Led to the harbor of thy placid shrine. 

And left no wrecks to mourn ; 

Laid all the pathway level to thy feet, 

The sweet goal there in view ; 
And ev'n because the love was smooth aiid sweet. 

Thou didst not find it true ! 

The doors that never did thy entrance bar. 

The talk that never failed, 
The step that shrank not from thy side afar, 

Was it that these had staled? 

142 



There was no hour the cycles bore thee then, 

More fitly sphered than this ; 
Now, in thine age, dim records risen again. 

First shalt thou know the bliss ? 

There all was ease, response and soft accord, 

When thou to her didst come ; 
There was she lady, and thou there wast lord, 

Thine was her nested home; 

The lowliest hap that common living chanced, 

Took brightness in your word. 
The loftiest oracle thy soul advanced. 

Found answer when she heard. 

Yet sudden meeting was a subtle start 

Throughout her elfin fram.e; 
Thy outward image, that within her heart 

Met like the electric flame. 

One house enfolding, ye were all at one. 

And all the world was yours ; 
A faint disorder must her currents run, 

Encountering out of doors ! 

That dainty stammer, could it never teach 

What secret languor stole : 
Which was no fetter of the strings of speech. 

But flutter of the soul? 

She who no ardors uttered nor concealed, 

Whose converse now alone 
Was ev'n as wedlock had the sanction sealed, 

Not she thy truest one? 

But rainbow glamours had thy sense beguiled. 
From thine apparent good ; 

143 



The very joy in which thy season smiled, 
Thy wit false-understood. 

O crown of wisdom ! who didst all things know, 

Of all the worlds, but Life ; 
Well mightst thou gather all the fruits below 

Of Love, but home and wife. 



LEAF AND LIMB 

Said we the leaf wore all the airy grace, 
Hard form were trunk and bough ? 

Those dalliers wantoned in the day's embrace, 
With lightfoot dance and vow ; 

But, let the twilight find its western place, — 
A corpse of darkness now. 

Then while in freshness of new life afar, 

November sweeps the grove. 
Pale on the glows that set the evening star. 

One tenderest gauze is wove, 
Of faithful branchlets, that no frost will mar. 

Strong and serene as love. 



How shall I know thee, Life, without thy Pain? 
And if not here, how, if I live again? 

Yet I have known thee. Life, without the sor- 
row ; 
And if on earth, I may on earth's tomorrow. 



144 



LEADERSHIP 

A space there was to go, but the way I did not 
know, 
And I cast about for Leader, far and near; 
I will ask the wisest Man, I bethought, of all I 
can; 
But his own and none beside, he said, was 
clear. 

In an olden golden Book, then I sunk my earnest 
look ; 
And it showed me of the How, but not the 
Where. 
Next I questioned of a Lot, would God answer? 
God would not; 
Babbling chance to babbling spirits might de- 
clare. 

I would ask of Him alone ! and my hand was in 
His own ; 
But only tov/ard Himself my steps he drew. 
''Thy way thyself must find, thou must find too 
how to find ; 
Thus alone thou canst be like me, offspring' 
true." 

I would follow with the Crowd, where the Silent 
Voice was loud ; 
But they pushed me and they pulled me, never 
led. 
Why outwear the long refrain, of the widening 
search in vain? 
Since at last the pilot came, the voyage sped. 

O my angel, guiding Dream, what an err-light 
didst thou seem. 
And in that same futile seeming, truest friend ! 

145 



Nought before me didst thou know, one thing 
only couldst thou show, 
My beginning, which within it bore my end. 



JUNGLE 

Where the tiger sets his den ; 
Nought be mess for him but men, 

Once he learn the taste: 
Lion is the noblest there ; 
Wolf and serpent know the lair ; 

O for hfeless waste! 

And a thousand leagues away 
Lies the dire encampment, say? 

At thy homely doors 
Watch the beasts their hour to spring, 
In thy chambers ; everything 

Voiceless hisses, roars. 

Secret wish for brother's ill 
In thy closet crouches still. 

While thou lov'st his praise ; 
Sheets, where innocence should breathe, 
By the hell-blast fiercest seethe, 

Neither sleep allays. 

Might the Sun, whose arrows search 
Every kennel, every perch, 

Scour them with his ray ! 
All from him the brood has grown. 
All of him the fiery zone ; 
Wilder uproars are his own ; 

Be it as he may. 



146 



THE LAST LOVE 

Farewell to you then, once dearest, 
And still in your distance dear! 
My brain is not of the clearest, 
But haply my heart is clear; 
If storm, and thunder, and blast and rain. 
Could leave my skies to their calm again. 

I hope it is more than quiet 

That hovers between hard gales ; 
I hope the eternal riot 

That close to this hour assails. 
Of hunger, and yearnings and heart's lament, 
Be sunk forever to low content. 

It is life, they say, worth choosing. 
To be pain's and passion's thrall. 
And better loving and losing, 
Than not to have loved at all ; 
But I will gently forego the life. 
To pass the fever, the cloud and strife. 

And this if your aid may bring me, 

To love no more again. 
The love that can only wring me 
With unachieving pain, 
At least for the end of a joyless course, 
Accept my blessing, without remorse. 

For the peace that I feel descending. 

In cool as of August eve. 
On its wing bears healing and ending 
Of more than the pangs I leave ; 
For little is earth but a losing love, 
And her lights are dim till dawn above. 



147 



HEREDITY 

I could follow thee, O my father,- 

Renew thy life in my youth, 
Some leaves of thy laurels gather, 
Thy wisdom utter, and truth ; 
But the blood of my mother has bent me aside : 
Ah, why would that bridegroom choose that 
bride? 

I might have revived, sweet mother, 
Some glimpse of thy fairy face. 
Of thy witchery, like none other. 

Thy wanton and wayward grace ; 
But the mandate relentless, bequeathed of my 

sire. 
Forbade me thy fantasies, urged aspire. 

What good of my lineage regal 

Unless they could blend their state? 
There is praise of the thrush and the eagle, 
But not if they sought to mate. 
And I halt on my progress, beguiled in my birth. 
By cross of the parentage — Heaven and Earth. 

At the bound of a far horizon 

They clasp in their tranced embrace ; 
But the vale that my own walk lies on. 
Divides them^ a desert space. 
As the one cannot rise, can the other descend. 
Till both may recover me, child and friend ? 



148 



HER RECLAMATION 

Oh, it was not on you that my anger leapt, 

Poor lover who never loved ; 
I could scarce have wept, I had rather slept, 

On all that your idlesse moved. 

It was only my lot, which was dull, God wot. 

That wrested my patience out; 
I had looked for a man, and I found him not ; 

And whether he lives, I doubt. 

Yourself, O fancy not I despise ; 

I always have liked you well ; 
And I never could prize at the rate of lies 

The fables you used to tell. 

But I only thought, in those days untaught, 

What a noble man might be ; 
And never, assure you, on me you wrought, 

But to question^ if you were he. 

Your subtleties wove a luring bower, 

Whose odors awhile I drank; 
Till there came the hour, that beyond my power, 

Like trance on my spirit sank. 

Not words of might, nor your touches light, 

But my weakness made my pain ; 
I pondered, were this my hero-knight ; — 

Heaven, almost as weak again? 

O coward, O white-heart, boneless knave. 

To kindle, and leave aglow ! 
Do you think it so brave, a torch to wave, 

And cast it where fire must grow? 

But remember me true, I blame not you ; 

I had but a dream, and woke. 
You never had done me harm^ I knew ; 

Consider not what I spoke. 

149 



HARBOR 
(1899) 

The rocking, the bottomless roUing, to a soft 
pulsation have sunk, 

The mountainous deeps, brown-shoaling, into 
wrinkle and pond are shrunk ; 
Our prow as in breathing lifted, never a care 
how the wind be shifted. 

Our ship like a Gulf-spar drifted, slackens, open- 
ing hold and bunk. 

The foam of the wild sea-wrestle falls to levels 
of winding froth. 

And the tame sea licks at the vessel, now^, old 
comrade on parting loth; 
Aha, but the times behind us ! for these fond- 
lings hardly remind us ; 

So fellowly now we find us, who have been so 
fell, so wroth? 

Ah, truth, but there grows a yearning, over 

paths we have come so far ; 
For the voyage has no returning, on whose port 

at the last we are. 
Well, the calm at least is sweetness ; and the 

end is its own completeness ; 
And the Hours, for all their fleetness, haply 

hold of the Sun, the star. 

But the goal of our weary winning, by what 

token is that the end? 
For its nam,e is indeed Beginning, forward once 

our eyelight bend ; 
By the Shore in its bloom and brightness, 

rocks in their strength and leaves in 

lightness, 
By the City in gold and whiteness, more than 

Ocean is Haven friend. 

150 



GRASSHOPPER'S LAST WORD 

Your favor is scant, 
Fine mistress Ant, 
To a neighbor and heart-warm friend ; 
As I sang in the harvest, 
''Now dance, ere thou starvest," 
The comfort your mercies lend. 
Your goad is sharp, but it bears no sting ; 
Nor yet would I gladlier feed than sing. 

may your hoard, 
In its vaultage stored, 

Suffice you for time to come ! 
What poor acquittance, 
That earth-laid pittance, 
For wingless days and dumb ! 
The frost that has parted my flowers and me. 
Abates my hunger, as even my glee. 

1 am content. 
With the element 

That bred me, to wane and fall ; 
I asked but smiling 
One grain of your piling. 
But you are no host at all. 
What gladness ever has grown on earth 
Of you, what music or glimpse of mirth? 

But singer and sage. 
From the early age, 
When I answered Anacreon, 
Have tuned their voicings 
To my rejoicings, 
That echo from Tennyson ; 
And I to my silence may pass with these, 
Far better than fatten for one dull freeze. 



151 



GRAIN LIFE 

/ am the wheat of God; and in the teeth of beasts 
I shall he ground, that I may he found the pure hread. 

I 

New world that has found me! 

Yet seems to be old ; 
Winds roughen around me, 

With tidings of cold. 

Yet I rise, never fearing, 

Thro' leaves flitting down ; 
Green lancelet, appearing 

Mid landscape of brown. 

Still the woods are a wonder ; 

Still birds are in tune ; 
And the sunshine thereunder 

Lies soft as the moon. 



Will it always continue? 

These portents of ill, 
With graces, that win you 

To live and be still? 



II 

They are gone! their knell has been rung me 
In swing of that dolorous blast. 

I thought, when the hues overhung me. 
They were something too gorgeous to last. 

Now the life on the earth is fast frozen, 

The life in the air has died ; 
And the pall for the bier is chosen, 

Of thickening white full wide. 



152 



How it stiffens and smooths the waters ! 

How it dries the milk and the fruits ! 
Overhead, for the showers, sleet patters, 

Frost cracks and creeps at my roots. 

When the strong huge oaks are brown-blasted, 
When the bright quick birds are fled^ 

When the kingdom of flowers is wasted, 
What shelter for mv little head? 



But the tempests rumble without me, 
Yet harming me never the least ; 

I will tuck my pale sheets about me. 
And sleep like the grounded beast. 



HI 

Is it song that has called me, or murmur of 
wind 

From the bed of my rest? 
Is it sunlight, or streamlet, or drops grown kind 

Out of Heaven's full breast? 

Oh, the lambs and the blossoms ! the opening 
green, 

That mirrors how mine has done ! 
But a moment ago it could scarce be seen. 

Till you caught me against the sun. 

But my neighbors already are waving in joy ; 
While I think, I am springing, and hiding the 
earth. 
No more shall the season devour and destroy ; 
But all shall be gladness, and music, and 
mirth. 



153 



IV 

Deeper blue the heaven has vaulted, richer yet 
than all before, 
Till it seems to bend upon us^ and mingle with 
our green. 
Nobler roll our fragrant billows, not to burst on 
desert shore, 
But to scarf their wandering slopes with shade 
and sheen. 

And my stature now at fulness, w^ears no more 
the idle plume, 
But my fluted stem has risen, fit column for 
the crown ; 
And the ensign of my progress, forth above the 
rounding glume. 
Now at last my beard advances, to ripening 
hue of brown. 

the world of wealth and splendor ! oh the 

pomp of Nature's zenith ! 
Where the sun has but to look on dailiest 
things and turn them new. 

1 am centre of this empire, and ye witness what 

it meaneth : 
]^^line is all the bright creation, all my minis- 
ters are you. 

V 

This is a new befalling ! all that age we stood. 
Grew of our own will, changing, waving as we 

would ; 
Now have they girded us, and where we would 

not, borne ; 
Now have we low been laid, tossed, shackled, 

bruised and shorn. 



154 



A feebler vein throughout our stiffening forms 

had spread ; 
Our curvy tops were searing, yellow, sunset red ; 
It may be, joy was past in that familiar field; 
Faint loss it may have been, to that stern edge 

to yield. 

How o'er the parching clods we faltered in the 
heat! 

I wonder if the world has worn its year com- 
plete? 

No matter, here in shade, serene and cool we lie ; 

The feverish moods and transformations all are 
by. 

Here is our lodge secure^ together head to head; 
No more forever now the frost and storm we 

dread ; 
Here sweetly from our slumber still of peace we 

breathe ; 
Protection fast above, foundation firm beneath. 

VI 

Horror of death! woe to me now, what has up- 
torn my rest? 
Bellowing fangs, throat of the fiend, engines 
that howl and gnash ! 
All was so calm, age had come on, quiet had 
smoothed my nest; 
Why should this tempest crash? 

Band after band, these of my kind, whirled from 
our tranquil couch. 
Leap to their doom, sink at the jaws, rush 
from, the world of light ; 
What of them then? scattered to nought, scarce 
but a dust they crouch; 
End of us all, but night. 

155 



These are the stems, nothing but these, shattered 
in empty straw, 
Shapely and brown, strong in their grace, 
bending them once in play ? 
There must we lie, skeleton white, lost in the 
monster maw% 
Vapor and ash, for aye. 

Mine is the turn ; helpless I wait, swift shall the 
darkness be. 
Sad little life, never assured, nothing will now 
remain ; 
Purpose was none, slender thy joy, heavy thy 
toil, with me ; 
All to be passed in vain. 



PERMANENCE 

''No more the roses of the transient cheek 

Beguile me with their promise unfulfilled ! 
The skeleton within, my thought shall seek; 
There be illusion stilled ! 

"No more the tender hope, the dream, the glance ; 
Swift airs and hues, the glimmer of an hour ; 
Build on the rock, and let the rainbow dance. 
And vanish with her hour." 

But since the moulding of the orbs themselves, 
Plave sternest things the sounder wear ap- 
proved ? 

Her rock from age to age Niagara delves ; 
Her rainbow stands unmoved. 



156 



THE FULNESS OE DAYS 

Three score years and ten, 
The musing Psalmist laid the perfect span ; 

And well it might be then, 

After these eldest men, 
A seemly measure for declining man. 

Science, our Scripture now. 
Looks forth at large upon the teeming race, 

And gleaning every bough, 

Finds she can scarce allow 
To each frail generation half that space. 

But I have looked and seen 

Through mist and darkness yet a nearer bound; 
The bud of tenderest green, 
Where soil nor storm has been, 

Alone with glory of perfection crowned. 

Whose work is so complete 
As theirs who strayed not from their mother's 
breast ? 

Of whom is love so sweet, 

For whom applause so meet, 
As that soft sinless infant at its rest? 

O garden of delight, 
Whose flower has sunken in the scarlet plague. 

Not there the weary blight, 

Of nerve and heart and sight. 
From long disaster and repining vague; 

But leaning at the gate, 
Where that blest visitation has withdrawn, 

So little and so great, 

There best w^e learn our state, 
There sound our deepest dark, and trace the 
dawn. 

157 



FARMER'S BORDERLAND 

The bars were nothing brave or strange, that 

parted our meadow from neighbor's field ; 
They sHpped, they stayed, without a change 

from the bars that ever the yoemen wield ; 
The staggering posts with ages cracked, the 

mortises wider and smoother wore. 
The slide-rails warped and sagged and slacked, 

with the sliding and sitting, more and 

more. 
The growth grew slowly to decay, and slowly 

grew the decay to growth, 
Like every other mortal way, in the kingdom of 

man and of Nature both ; 
The moss o'erturfed the bevilled scarp, the ant 

and the beetle were in and out, 
Till not an edge was bright or sharp, and all 

was at one with the soil about. 

But not as other bars of old, far less the newer, 

unmoved they stand, 
In image that can never mould ; for they were 

portals of fairy-land. 
What climes of fancy stretched beyond, that 

tempted our infant thought and feet! 
And dreaming, still more soft and fond, yet fol- 
lowed in after season sweet. 
When childhood's misted wonderings fade, there 

seems a glory to pass from earth ; 
Yet few more springs shall weave their shade, 

till fairier charming have come to birth. 
The neighbor's realm was haunted space, as 

never the baby glance had awed. 
When answering gleam of neighbor face in 

maiden blossom had looked abroad. 
For there I w'een the ancient bars have many a 

meeting and parting marked, 

158 



And nimbler sped the gliding spars, than when 
the cattle and swine we harked ; 

What lingering on the mouldered bound, what 
lasting of last words sighed and sworn I 

The hairy flanks that rubbed them round, had 
never as we the timbers worn. 

Now many a year the bars are gone, the fields 
and the fences are all new-laid ; 

How rise they on my thought alone, and blot 
the record this year has made? 

No more the gates of elfin-range, those barriers 
open henceforth and close ; 

But passing changeless in their change, them- 
selves in the ghostly trance repose. 

Ah, deeper still in fairy-land old age has en- 
tered, than childhood or youth ; 

Nought of my hourly work may stand, while 
all I have dreamed and lost is truth. 

ECLIPSE 

Clear was the orb in its holy rise. 

Fond was the gaze of earth ; 
And when on its evening couch it lies, 
Its plaintive ray is of tenderer dyes 

Than gloried its festal birth. 

But all the tract of its mid career 

Labored with tyrant shade ; 
Or cloud usurped the resplendent sphere, 
Or beams were shorn by eclipses drear. 

That not for an hour waylaid. 

The rise, the set, and the shade, we know ; 

Beautiful is the dawn ; 
What melodies round the cradle flow. 
What minors breathe in the cadence low 

Of steps from the world withdrawn. 

159 



So full of promise, earth has not room 

Fairly her pledge to pay. 
The promise of childhood is mortal bloom, 
Immortal promise is of the tomb ; 

The promise of prime, decay. 

The babe in an instant clasps us hard, 

In an hour we may win on age ; 
But midway life is a castle guard, 
Now stormed by passion, now half-unbarred 

By treaty of interest sage. 

Not wondrous long is our mortal sight. 

Not eagle-sure of its mark ; 
But earthly life is eclipse of light. 
With travail of cloud, and wilh gleaming bright 

Before and beyond the dark. 

O pure, too pure for incarnate thought. 

World of the world's desire ! 
End of all seeking, appear unsought. 
No dream go forth of my longing, nought, 

To steal of thy sacred fire. 



i6(j 



EXPOSTULATION 

(September 14, 1901.) 

List, Viper, in thy sulky cell : 
A little word we have to tell. 

Thy range is wide, thy food is sure ; 
Thy charter, as oiir own secure. 

None here will harm thee; wilt thou sting? 
We pray thee, do not such a thing ! 

Our law is kindness, to all kinds ; 

Soft words prevail with sternest minds. 

A viper, always have we sworn, 
Hath rights like every creature born. 

Thy flickering tongue, thy ceaseless hiss, 
Thy sliding stealth, were naught amiss. 

Our home and ways our own would be ; 
A world of welfare, mild and free. 

Thou wilt not leave thy sunless nest. 
To poison those who serve thee best? 

— No hearkening? We may find a heel, 
Which through all armor thou shalt feel. ' 



161 



DOG CONSCIOUS 

Still at my post on steadfast guard ; 

Where is my Master gone? 
Long have I lacked His rich reward ; 

Long hath His light not shone. 

Why could I not have gone with Him, 

So as I loved to do? 
Was I not faithful to the brim ; 

Quick, and yet humble too ? 

Yet, since thundered His word of will, 

Barring my upcast plea, 
I can ponder His kingdom still, 

All He has been to me. 

Close at His step to follow mute. 

Fast at His side to keep, 
Playing excursion and pursuit; 

Circles aside to sweep — 

Spring at His chirp, His word, His hand, 

Fetch His desire from far. 
Every His thought to understand. 

Deep as my reaches are, — 

These, the delights that dance my heart. 

Monarch, His law denies ; 
Let the great past then, here apart. 

Lone as I rest, arise. 

None of my like, to nose or chide. 

Wander this quiet place ; 
These are the bounds, where neighbor's side 

Scarce from our own I trace. 

Here, came one of His race in sight. 
Of the false Masters one, 

162 



Duty would be divided quite, 
Fawn on him, bark, or run. 

When they march to our own true door, 
Nought but as all were theirs. 

Then how I rush, and charge and roar ; 
Trifle with me, who dares ! 

Even as my Sovereign I adore, 

Aliens my anger move ; 
All is devotion, anger more ; 

Wrath itself is a love. 

Therefore those fellow-pets I hate. 
Lurking and basking low ; 

Sleek in their coat and sly in gait — 
Hatred nor love they know. 

Not with that velvet race I vie. 
Not in their darkness shine; 

Gazing into my Master's eye. 
Part of its light is mine. 

Truly, too, of His own high kind. 
Like us poor vermin dark. 

Shall we not half their converse find 
Little else than a bark? 

Much of their talk I understand, 
More than they think it, oft, 

Theirs but a little further planned. 
Tempered, flowing, and soft. 

Even amidst my fury often. 

Armed at the stranger's tread. 

How in a piteous whine I soften; 
Rather be friends instead ! 

163 



How did this blessing come to us? 

When did we first begin 
Higher life to inherit thus? 

What were our earliest kin? 

Far in the ancient wastes of green — 
Yes, we have known them well ; 

Never these eyes of ours have seen, 
Yet we abide the spell ; 

Never my rest I think to lay, 

Where it soever fall, 
Carpet or grassland, straw or clay, 

Swift, ere a thought at all, 

Round and about must claw-rakes twirl. 

Gathering like as leaves. 
There on the smooth our shape to curl: 

Ah, how the memory cleaves ! 

There, I say, in the roofless wild, 

Roaming abroad, our kind, 
Wolf or jackal, unreconciled, 

Master could never find. 

They were too free to bear a yoke; 

Space of the world was theirs ; 
Over the putrid carcass woke, 

Howled from their horrid lairs ; 

Could not articulate a bark. 

Had not the shaded sense; 
Less could they learn, grow, follow, mark. 

Garner our gain immense. 

I was of these, and like in root ; 

Looked not beyond my peers ; 
Only, I fancy, more a brute; 

Smitten with nameless fears. 

164 



Till on a day, no record now, 

One high stature I saw ; 
Whose but aspect, I knew not how, 

Grappled me to His law. 

One and head of our race, for all, 

Strangely He seemed to me, 
Though so other, so wondrous tall, 

Valiant and gifted, He. 

He was above me ; that, no more, 

Knew I, or need to know. 
Thence the march of our progress bore 

Onward, and ever so. 

They, who would call no power their lord, 

Nothing beyond them owm, 
Stunted and outcast, foul, abhorred, 

Wander their ways alone. 

Where is the wonder? who can climb, 

Taking no hold above ? 
Reaching upward, the hand sublime 

Reaches downward, in love. 

We, oh how shall our thanks be prayed. 
Dogs, whom the rest contemn, 

Humbling ourselves, have found the aid. 
Lifting us up toward Them. 

W^hat is the terror, like His frown? 

Ravishment, like His smile? 
Nothing our wild estate hath known, 

Now but an hour could wile. 

Dreadful the scourge He wields sometimes, 
Nor can we always know 

165 



What the purposes, what the crimes ; 
Only accept the blow. 

Then, when at last the hand puts forth, 
Then when the lap is spread, 

Transport, that worlds were never worth, 
Deluging, sinks my head. 

Supplications I breathe all day. 

Even if no murmur fall ; 
Hears He the prayers that find no way ? 

Knows He, that knoweth all? 

Food in season. He giveth me; 

Couch and warmth are of Him ; 
But His own glory, only He, 

Maketh all other dim. — 

Why does he sometimes fear, and stumble? 

Something for him too strong? 
Yet more wondrous, anon so humble. 

Laying himself along? 

Can it be true? no high decision. 

Vanquishing all things, his ? 
Lives there, beyond all mortal vision, 

Some one, whose dog he is? 

Would they be all, perchance, far better, 

Bowing the heart, as we? 
Each to confess him boundless debtor. 

Only in service free? 

Are there of these, who humble never. 

Nothing above them hold? 
Are they not dwarfed, and barren ever, 

Like my brethren of old? 

i66 



— Yonder! He comes; oh joy, long hoping! 

Where do my fancies fleet! 
Out with the dreams, the brainsick moping; 

Up and away, to meet! 



THE CONFIDANT 

Where shall we look for faith on earth? 

Kind natures men and women are; 

They would not wrong us, rob nor mar ; 
Their hearts are all our praises worth ; 
They mean to keep our counsel pure ; 

But faithfulness, that need must be 

A fiber of eternity 

Wove through the whirling strands of time, 

Who can that infinite sustain? 

Faith of a moment may be sure, 

But of a moment is not faith ; 
Clay is not made for lofty mould, 
Save but to catch the form, not hold ; 
That flower is of another clime. 

Our lock-wards, rust and wear shall scathe ; 

And where the lock no key may gain? 
We have no thread so subtly spun. 
But comes at last before the sun. 

One, one I found, to my desire! 

Not gentlest, though his smile was fair ; 

Stern was his touch and dire his eye ; 
His works were mild, were passing grim ; 
We worshipped, basked and shrank at him ; 
But in his track was purity. 

His nature nought could bend or tire ; 
His tongue could pierce but not ensnare ; 
His seat, like Jahveh's, cloud in air; 

The name we named him. Fire. 

167 



With him the secret laid to rest, 
No more shall babble or molest; 

Where thy black seal, great Judge, is set. 

Nor fate, nor man, nor demon yet. 
The prisoner could restore ! 
I think them scarce to blame of old 
Who wrapped in thine eternal fold 
The frame our soul outwore. 
Not Hercules the wrath can slake 
That arms the fury-headed snake, 
Till more Herculean, thy right hand 
Out-hiss the dragon with its brand. 

The surface every wanderer sweeps. 

Thine are the central, soundless deeps ; 
What foul-grown remnants of disgrace 
Polluted our kind Mother's face 

Till thou the cumbered ground hast cleared, 

And beauty soon for burning reared ; 
What aches, what madness of the heart. 
Sweet spirits must distract and part, 

O'er poisoned registers of shame. 
Till one smooth of thy balming hand 

Bring peace from beds of flame. 
There faltering never, faith may stand ; 

All wooed her, thou alone hast wed ; 
No heart such trust can hold assured ; 

Not ocean, who shall yield his dead. 
Nor heaven, the tablet of its Lord ; 

Not God-loved Silence knows the power 
To guard like thee her line ; 

Her tongueless vigil any hour 
May break, but never thine. 
Some told, on awful Pentecost 

They saw thee, flaming on their prayers. 
With accents of the Holy Ghost ; 
But yet the words were theirs. 
Some, that the wintered world at last, 
A leaf before thy rolling blast, 

i68 



Unbound^ unbounded Norland wolf, 
Thy universal maw should gulf; 
And how renew the holier age, 

So fair as by that end of all ; 
And on its errors, through thy rage, 

Not vengeance but forgiveness fall ! 



BALANCE 

O Maker of all things, what are these, 

The things thou hast made? bereaving shocks, 

Devouring fires, and winds that freeze. 
Whelming billows and heartless rocks ; 

Beasts that poison and that rend, 

Pains, consuming victim and friend; 

Chances that cloud all glimpse of plan, 

Cruel trespass of man on man ; 

Thee through all things I adore, 

Hourly in thankfulness; and wherefore? 

Amidst the plagues, wars, frost and fire, 

HelHsh tiger and famine dire. 

Maniac whirlwinds and cruel seas. 

Yet Love thou has made ; and what are these ? 



169 



CLOUDS AND DAWN 

Now is your time, dull vapors ! all night long 
Idle ye lay, none hiring you to good ; 

A dimness on the sky's immortal throng, 
A few pure stars ye blotted where ye stood. 

Now, when the morning hunts the vanquished 
gloom. 
What fires ye kindle on the paling blue, 
That earth's faint eyes in gladness turn to you ! 

Short is the season of your roses' bloom; 
But we forget not what ye once could do. 



II 



CLOUDS AND MOON 

There, in the fields where cloud-assemblies part. 
Between the boulder-edges of high June, 

"Behold the wandering moon. 
Like on that has been led astray. 
Through the heaven's wide pathless way;" 
Forlorn as night-bird whom the day-birds thwart ; 
Unfollowing waif beside the march of those, 
Not half so living-white as they, she glows ; 
So massed and shaded, not by millions she ; 
But half-way rounded, thinned and hollow'd 

through, 
As if she melted in the tidal blue ; 
Wan, faint and errandless, alone she goes, 
Till dark o'erwhelm that day; there shalt thou 

see; 
These shall add blinds to night; her face the 
lamp shall be. 



170 



THE CLIFF AND THE CATARACT 

Upon the mountain's robe of folded rock, 
Intends Eternity; as one in doubt, 
He tries his throbless hand, age in and out, 
If there he can work change, or will it mock, 
Alone of earthly things, his patient skill? 
Where all is fleeting, there for once is rest ; 
The very stars come over it and go ; 
Man's thunder-car, that flashes all and shuts. 
Each instant reeling what its follower cuts, 

Yet hour on hour will fix to sight that crest; 

Here anchored, wandering eye and soul are still ; 

And mortal walk, by access hard and slow, 

There pausing, not on earth such peace may 

know. 

And at its hem, behold the water's toil ! 

Steep from above the whitening arches bound ; 
Deep from beneath the wrestling torrents boil ; 
The oval smooths, one moment grown are gone. 

To witness calm that never shall remain; 
The flowers of foam have spring and fall in one ; 

There storm shall be, when all is stillness 
round ; 
The roar importunate calls ocean dumb ; 

And all those ages may attend in vain, 
A breath of silence on the strife to come,. - 

And these are one ; the mountain framed the fall, 
The fall, through those vast leisures, carved the 

steep. 
One was a torrent once, fire-seething deep. 
The other, a sierra of the sky. 
Let faithful child ancestral form recall ; 

Yet birth is contrast, and the farthest nigh. 



171 



CITY OF THE DEAD 

How do thy highways flow, how do thy numbers 
grow, 
Widen thy spaces, O City of my dead! 
Once here and there a tomb chilled my unfolding 
bloom ; 
Now thy pale traces await me every tread. 

Not guarding hallowed grounds, not heaving 
grassy mounds, 
Not willow-sentried, my City wide and still ; 
Here where the caldrons burn, where human tides 
return, 
Forms of the buried rise, death-mansions fill. 

First when I trode the street, where the world- 
pulse's beat 
Echoed within, all was life at very crest; 
Now every shadowed street comes with a wind- 
ing sheet ; 
Here then was motion, here record now, and 
rest. 

More are the mustered shrouds now than the 
roaming crowds : 

Number I tell not, but more are those in might. 
Even as the fixed array scatters the throng away, 

Forms I behold not, subdue the tribes of sight. 

Build seat and temple high, dome underbear the 
sky, 

Not so ye humble the City of the Dead ! 
Pillar in pomp serene, palace in Babel sheen, 

Spire over forest seen, bow the brave head; 

Thou, patient home of ours, league of all warring 
powers, 
Come, as we near thee, uplift thy portal gray! 
Fire shall not blast thy halls, foe never pierce thy 
walls, 
Time nor Eternity wear thee away. 

172 



CITADEL 

High on its hill the castle stands, 
Renown and strength of Western lands ; 

Earth smiles below. 
Gray port and turret gaze afar, 
Discerning clouds of gathering war, 

To meet the blow. 

Upheaving of organic stone. 

We thought that olden realms alone 

Could pile such towers ; 
But where, on highland, march or Rhine, 
More stately battlement than thine. 

Strong hold of ours ! 

Within the closure of thy walls, 
Deep-centered in thy dusky halls, 

What rule, what eye ! 
The widest and the narrowest cares, 
The brain that counsels, hand that dares. 

Heart sure and high. 

Through all thy corridors and cells, 
Thy vaulted crypts and pinnacles. 

What ordered pace ; 
Forth of thy loopholes' grated nooks, 
How many a piteous captive looks 

On alien Space! 

But here the captive and the lord 
No more divided by the sword. 

In one compose; 
The dark invaders of the mind, 
The sin, the sickness of mankind, 

These are the foes. 



173 



Here may the eye that knew not Hght, 
First learn the holy beam of sight; 

Here may the soul 
That never pierced its cloud of sense, 
Lone spark in emptiness immense, 

Its flower unroll. 

To shelter of this rampart stern, 
As toward a father's bosom turn 

The poor and lost. 
It is not Moloch^ here at last, 
But Christ his rock has founded fast, 

And ranked his host. 



AT WORST 

No, all is void, illimitable void ; 

There comes no answer from the skies or 
grave. 
Not ev'n substantial as the things I joyed, 

The things I dreamed^ that sorer hungers 
crave. 
My faith was all foundation on the air, 

My hope was ladder to a ravelling cloud ; 
I poured my heart like water in my prayer. 

And not one accent pierced the desert shroud. 
Star, air and stone, the world's confusion build, 

Stone^ air and star, afford not voice or thought ; 
At will, the dungeon with your fancies gild, 

But know ye, truth-light brings them all to 
nought. 

Then go the world its way, if such it be ; 

Go thou thy own ; the world is nought to thee. 



174 



THE BACKLOG 

Lie at thy rest, brave length of oaken brawn ; 

The hearth shall fold thee well; 
And, fair caress to lull thee unwithdrawn, 
The wanton dallyings of the flame shall fawn 

About thy rugged fell. 

What balmy whispers shall her idlesse breathe, 

Too fine for w^ord of sound ! 
What streaming fingers blandish and enwreathe, 
What coils and tendrils, welling from beneath, 

Entwine three round and round ! 

A thousand years the blasts have charged in vain 

On thy unconquered front ; 
The clouds have scourged thee with their hail and 

rain, 
The suns have parched, the frosts have pierced 
amain. 
And thou hast kept thy wont. 

Thou stoodst a column, when the winter's blade 

All herb and blossom felled ; 
A tower of green, the summer stretched thy 

shade, 
Ev'n by the ax thy timber undecayed. 

Its lusty fiber held. 

But here, a sinuous clasp, a supplest bow, 

A voice and glance of cheer. 
Invest thy ancient fortitude ; and now. 
Who shall be vanquisher, this tongue, or thou? 

Fate in that smile is near. 



175 



THE ARBITER 

The sundering sword, or the joining pen; 

The quelhng flash, or the quickening ray ; 
The whirlwind brool, or the tramp of men ; 

What is the wand of the surest sway? 

The ocean smites, and the oak gives way; 
The fire engirds, and the tower must fall ; 

The flag unbosoms, and cowards bray; 
But I know of a spell more swift than all. 

Before our April, before yet March 
The sun had pitted against the wind, 

Where cedar shelters, and coverts arch, 
In a bed no search of the frost could find, 
My weird awaited, with face declined ; 

My violet, mine to be, not now. 

With cheeks already how tender-lined, 

With breath already a mystic vow. 

O saint-like sweetness, through all the hours 

You had there in the cold to meditate. 
Did you never omen, of all the flowers 

How' far the highest would be your state? 

Did you feel, one token, for what you wait? 
A happier bloom than you even seemed. 

You m.ust have grown, with your matchless 
fate; 
A hue yet dearer upon you gleamed. 

The violet, forth of its leafless nook, 

My love had plucked, and upraised the face, 
As a mirror, far in its deep to look, 

Till the two souls mingle, the breaths embrace ; 

Then passed, where I sat in my wintered place, 
And cast me the floweret, a wave so slight 

It scarcely could utter her stately grace ; 
And onward, leading her path of light. 

176 



The grim war-engine they prove, how deep 

Its bolt will auger the plated shield: 
Who tests, withinward how far will creep 

The violet, first from the naked field? 

The keyless vaults of the heart, unsealed 
At the odorous touch, look forth on air ; 

The graves of passion their tenance yield ; 
The spirit steals what the thought would spare. 

It was long I had fasted of smile or word. 

Full sore had I pined the season through ; 
Love, memory, hope, in the wafture stirred, 

And their spring at a bound to the summer 
grew. 

O cloistered maiden^ perchance ye knew 
That your flower had borne of your heart along? 

O violet, violet, pale and true. 
The meek inherit before the strong! 



Sweet heart of maidenhood, that gives so much, 

The while it gives not all ! 
Sweet laughter, sweet regard, and sweetest touch. 

As leaflet's fall ! 
What is so dear in all the world's embrace. 

Where is such heavenly ease, 
As in the sparkle of that moonlight face. 

And tones like these? 
No, here was not the charm ; my own belov'd 

Was not so sweety but love. 
A thousand times she came and was removed ; 

That did not move. 
Not that fair look, but beauty, I adored ; 

Thou, Nature, wert my goal. 
Thy hues are deathless, and thy loving Lord 

Thus wooed my soul. 



177 



ANOTHER POEM 

''Another/' says the child we love, 

When we have given it theme of joy; 

Another sweet-thing, game, and rove; 
Another song, or toy. 

And gifts like these we might renew. 
One all as other, till they tire: 

"Another poem," now say you ; 
And yours be my desire. 

But is not this the like request. 
As if, because you smiled so sweet. 

That eve watched I you, waning west, 
Too far along the street. 

Now I, remembering how I thrilled. 
Should lift you my petition vain, 
To grant me, every hour I willed, 
That same bright glance again ? 

Would you not warn me, such must rise 
From down the fountain of the heart. 

And not be ordered to the eyes, 
And lips, by rule or art? 

I only know, if you were near. 

By all the Saints and Holy Mother, 

I'd keep my thanks for One, my dear, 
And never ask another. 



178 



DEVOTION 



ADAM'S CHOICE 

The Lord came near, a kingdom in each hand ; 

Within the gaze of man he set them down. 
"Heaven and the Wodd," he said, "before thee 
stand ; 

Choose either for thy own. 

"Both couldst thou hardly wield, for once or 
ever; 
Take then thy freedom ; for thy will is mine." 
And loyal man rung forth, "O Father, never 
My choice be aught but thine." 

He reached his hand for Heaven, and grasped 
amiss ; 

One realm from other had he not discerned. 
His heaven was but his worldly dream of bliss ; 

Earth and its heaven within, he left unlearned. 



i8i 



BETHESDA 

Here is the valley, unsearched and cool ; 
Here at its heart is the mystic pcK)L 

Miry border and greening slime, 
Daylight's fugitive, Nature's crime; 
Bottom faithless, and bosom flat, 
Bestial thirst cannot slake thereat ; 
Out of it swarm Egyptian stings, 
P'orth of it Pestilence mounts her wings ; 
Earth cannot match that poison-lair ; 
Heaven can find not an image there. 

Soft, a gleam of the azure breaks ; 
Soft, as a sigh, the surface wakes ; 
Light, in a shaft from the zenith, down 
Pierces the depth of the fetid brown; 
Out of that all-commanding sight 
Sink the dregs to the viewless night; 
Heavings thrill the expectant breast, 
Sky there dreams, when it falls to rest; 
Living freshness the waters breathe, 
Flowery arbors the margin wreathe ; 
Plunge thee, O filthiest^ first therein ! 
Now if ever thy cleansing win. 

Where is the sorrow, the guilt, the strife? 
Mystic water, thy name is Lifci 



182 



CHRISTIANITY 

What are thy titles, majesty of man? 

Supremest crown of earth, what gems are 

thine, 
That all our glories here so far outshine? 
Read me the claim^ who can ! 
Truth never told, law never laid before, 
New virtue and new joy forevermore? 

— Not in the goodness that my saints have borne, 
Not in their patience and their sweetness known 
Where'er the standard of my advent shone ; 
My balm to all that mourn ; 
Not in my hosts that all these ages rise. 
Not in my empire widening to the skies. 

In all the crime and infamy of old, 
That scourged the nations in my holy name. 
In all the bondage of the soul, and shame, 
The cruelties untold ; 

Such weights no other ever bore as mine; 

And these be witness of my strength divine. 



183 



THE COMING 

"I know thee, Truth, my queen alone ; 

But why is Dream so fair ? 
I leave her, come to seek thy throne, 

And find but desert there." 

Yea, when thou comest ; for thou canst not reach 

Anon come I to thee. 
Then thy awakening spirit I shall teach, 

Dream is but shade to me. 



COMMENCING MONK 

Two visions, through this lowly gate. 

Appear, to men and me ; 
A bare and burden-bound estate. 
Not I as lord but vassal there to wait. 
Is all the world can see. 

But that same altar of my trust. 

They call my very tomb ; 
They point at all it lays in dust, 
The shrines and idols of their love and lust. 

And wrap me in their gloom. 

"Did God create thee man," they say, 
"His making to unmake? 

His blessing wilt thou cast away, 
The joys He made, the glories more than they, 
For thy pale fancy's sake ? 

"Shall never bloom of wom.an blow 

For thy peculiar bower? 
No child of thine before thee grow. 
To call thee by the dearest name below 

We name Almighty Power? 

184 



''Is all the world of laboring man 

But lazar-house to thee? 
Is Greatness for thy holy ban ? 
Canst thou divine no universal plan 

In sad Humanity? 

"Beware, lest under name of toil, 
Be thy true worship Ease ! 

Lest, daunted by an hour's turmoil. 
Thou cast the fairest of thy gifts to spoil, 
Thy treasure to the seas!" 

Thus have they warned me; thou, O God, 
Knowest, if I heeded well; 

If path unbidden I have trod, 
If dream have lured me, or oppressor's rod 
Have scourged me, to my cell. 

And ye that muse on what I lose. 
And nought of what I gain ; 

Now, when this door my access woos, 
Bethink you, what my soul thereinward views, 
Let by no meteor vain. 

I vaunt you of no Heaven to come. 
Whose wicket is this bar; 

I show but mine elected home, 
I tell, that proudest arch of earthly dome 
Shields not such prize by far. 

Scarce even the shelter from the Foe 
Who wars and will not flee ; 

That he will seek me here I know, 
Nor placid shades can lay tem.ptation low, 
But where my work shall be. 

No plant of tenderness will bloom. 
Beside my ways on earth, 

185 



But I will blend its last perfume, 
Not here with ashes, but beyond the tomb, 
To rise in holier birth. 

The bridal of the soul is mine, 

That fears no barren bed ; 

The bond no discord shall untwine, 

The crown with ever-widening rays to shine, 

Though dream and youth be fled. 

No babe shall sing, but some shall fall 

Of that sweet care on me ; 
And where but two or three should call 
My name of Father in a single hall, 
A thousand there shall be. 

My counsel shall be close and dear, 

With their unfolding minds ; 
And friendship weaves our hearts more near, 
Where never cloud of interest dims the sphere. 
And all heaven's cordage binds. 

The world-work, on whose aid you pray, 

Is more for us than you ; 
We shine upon it as the day, — 
Not I the sun, dear Lord, but one meek ray, — 
And heal it as with dew. 

Nor think, the pomp of thrones be hid 
From our sequestered clan; 

To monarchs, if our Master bid. 
We bear the mandate, as His prophets did, 
But know them first as man. 

If ye, through all your earthly cloud, 

A star of honor claim, 
Which is but soul within your shroud, 

i86 



To all the world we bear that lamp avowed, 
And shine with clearer flame. 

This virgin courtyard's narrow square 
Is heaven's own harbor-isle. 

Dry up the founts that flow not there, 
Lord, of this hearth one ember let me bear, 
And it shall be Thy smile. 



CONSECRATION 

The hour is come : no more the joys 
Of wildering sense delight; 

New wings are forth upon their poise, 
And new must be the flight. 

Not to an earthly love 

The vows of this allegiance breathe ; 
These choral pulses could not move. 

Where tides of passion seethe. 

Not to a reverend guide, 

Whose voice is wisdom to the rest, 
I yield the pilotage untried; 

He knows not of my quest. 

Not in an order pure, 

That ranges loyal souls like Heaven, 
In leagues that out of time endure. 

Is measure for this leaven. 

Not on example high. 

Of hero leader hangs my gaze ; 
No Washington this hour be nigh. 

At parting of all ways. 

Not after starry saint 

I steer me, wheresoe'er he shine ; 

187 



That pointed lustre is but faint, 
Where all the sphere is mine. 

Not unto Christ the Lord, 

In person as on earth he shone, 

Can be this heart-blood offering poured ; 
Here is a greater one. 

Not under awful God, 

Before whose throne the nations bow, 
With hopes of rest and fears of rod, 

I lay me prostrate now. 

Too inward for all name, 

Too living for all form thou art, 

Revealing to each hour its aim, 
And one with my own heart. 



THE CROSS 

The surges of the world are high. 

Their bursting foam they toss ; 
The tempests mingle sea and sky; 

Above them hangs the Cross. 
O pleading ensign, what wilt thou? 
The headstrong torrent yoke, the rolling moun- 
tain bow? 

Those land-waves, also, roar their wrath. 

And moan their music far; 
But dark Direction aims their path. 

Utterance their voices are: 
They chant, *'0 Cross, high praise to thee ! 
But not in such a world as this thy rule can be." 

They heave their hugeness to and fro. 
Their fume the heaven obscures; 

i88 



The Cross falls dim, the Cross wears low ; 

It wavers, and endures. 
Beat with such billows, what can last? 
The rocks that scorned those tides, before their 
siege have past! 

Against the columned ocean's push, 

That standard thrusts not back ; 
It bends unmurmuring like the rush, 

But yields not root nor track. 
No time supplants the patient Cross ; 
The buffets lift it forth, its gain is born of loss. 

How should the stroke that fells the tower. 

The humble Cross exalt? 
It grows not up with tree and flower, 

It hangs from Heaven's vault. 
When it was borne on earthly war. 
It marshalled earth-broad hosts, but strowed 
their bones afar. 

Oh nations, ages, dull to learn. 

Think you the Cross will fade? 
Could all your conquering furies burn. 

Wide as the realm it laid? 
Was all your courage like its own? 
All rule of man and Nature, binding zone and 
zone ? 

Triumph was never, that endured, 

But where the Cross led on ; 
Achievement holds no bond assured. 

In other title won ; 
Be heaven in all its lights obscured. 

Before the Cross be gone: 
Not of itself a lamp to lead. 
But lifting clouded souls to light for all their 
need- 

189 



THE DIRECTOR 

They beat their chords, yet weld them not in one ; 
They wield their parts, but yet not jointed 

true; 
Once more, once more the wandering strain 
renew, 
A thousand times once more, the halted tone. 
Amid the throng he stands and works alone, 
Low laboring to an end they may not view ; 
The form of sound long must he hack and 
hew, 
Unrulier far than adamantine stone. 
No voice he mingles through the pealing choir, 
No hand among the strings, breath in the 

reeds ; 
The discord into harmony he leads 
By thwarting all attempt and all desire. 
How oft he dragged them when they did aspire ! 
How deep he harrows, till their spirit bleeds! 
What nothingness he makes their choicest 
deeds. 
Waste of their verdure, ashes of their fire ! 
His touch they feel not but in check and blow ; 
Him and his work, when all is wrought, they 
know. 



190 



EUPEPSIA 

Give me this day, and all my days to come, 
The needful bread ; yet, more than cereal crumb, 
Thy gift indeed, but which our hands might 

gain,— 
Another, wanting which the loaf were vain. 
Give true Digestion, that may turn my food. 
Itself but deadness, into living good. 
That bread sufficient, lies in plenteous pile ; 
What power but thine can render chyme and 

chyle ? 
Far oftener than the hour that lays my board. 
The nutriment besets me unimplored : 
V^exation more or disappointment less 
Attends the couch I leave, the morning dress ; 
These are my waking posset ; first be these 
Drained and subducted, ere the light can please; 
Then, each disaster that the day can bring, 
Each crosswise hovering of Temptation's wing. 
Each wound of loss, each contravening blast, 
Each rancor, belching from the laden past; 
Fear of to-morrow, cumber of to-day, 
World-morsels gulped and gristed not away; 
All these encountering, to dissolve, and all 
Immortal growth to nurture, great and small ; 
What strens^th and sweetness, man shall never 

know 
Till proof, the wormwood mouthful can bestow ! 
This, Heavenly Father, if thy grace may spare, 
Uttered and answered will be all my prayer ! 



191 



EROS 

For ever}^ shaft that Cupid aims, 
His heavenly brother forges one ; 

That, keen with pangs and dipt in flames ; 
This, tempered in the eternal Sun. 

He watches o'er the wounded heart, 
If there he find his opening mark; 

If upward turn the wistful smart, 

Or earthward, croucht in lust and dark. 

Sweet in its entrance, one shall bring 
Long festering pain and wail behind ; 

The other at its point shall sting, 
And wake the uncorrupting mind. 



FORWARD 

What are these drops upon thy cheeks. 

Poor baby, with thy broken toy? 
They will not last thee years, nor weeks ! 

Look forward ; there is other joy. 

What are these heaves that rend thy frame, 
Fierce youth, whose maiden heartless proves? 

Earth is not ashes by thy flame : 

Look forward ; there are other loves. 

What is the cloud that glooms thy brow, 
Man yet more fond, whose arrows glance? 

Maid may requite, but huge world, how? 
Look forward ; there is other chance. 

What is the night that shades thee round. 
Age-weary, who must end thy strife? 

Is light forever gone to ground? 
Look forward ! 

192 



JOB 

Peace, over all abroad, and all within; 

How is the world one vessel of great peace ! 
Storms are but murmurs, life is rest; and sin, 

A passing cloud that gathers but to cease ; 

While vestigeless of waning or increase, 
x\bove them all, the living heav'ns endure, 

Whose tuneful service watches no release, 
Whose glance is mildness, and whose walk is 
pure. 

What moves those hearts, that throb with doubt 
and fear. 

And call our state, mutation's cowering 
slave ? 
Nought but all-bounteous order governs here, 

And ocean freedom with no^ whelming w^ave 

Is mine, eternity this side the grave, 
And no foreboding what the rest shall be ; • 

The very hearts that in such tumults rave, 
Are calm environ and repose to me. 

Frail in themselves, they steadfast seek my face, 

Uncertain in all else, on me they rest ; 
They understand not, but the}^ render grace, 

And him that claims the least they honor 
best. 

Who can resolve me, wherefore thus op- 
pressed. 
They groan with shadows that but witness light. 

Or how the soul, once aspiration-blest. 
Should falter ever, or relapse to night? 

Our flesh indeed is tremulous to pain ; 

The loving ties that lead enchanted man, 



193 



Full oft may sunder, long to close again ; 

My daughters once were fair, and now are 

wan; 
We may not hold the warp and woof of plan ; 
But change is only as the swaying leaf. 

Whose root decays not in that twinkling 
span ; 
"Whence grows the mastery of imperial Grief ? 

Now I remember! once, three lives ago, 

I too was clouded, under pangs and care. 
Sure it is years since I have thought that woe ; 

And now it rises, unaloof and bare. 

Oh memory, strange thy necromancies are! 
Almost aghast one moment was I smote 

With that intense perspective unaware ; 
Now' in the ages past behold it float. 

Yes, I repined, I wept, despaired and cursed, 

If dreams like these were ever truth of mine. 
Whence should they grow? how find their pas- 
sage first, 

Possessing mansions not of their design? 

Yet how had such serenity divine, 
Which thus hath rased them from my heart so 
long, 

In my clear firmament thus come to shine 
But for those vapors that had done me wrong? 

Well may I bear with others likewise proved, 

Who in their tribulations sigh and moan. 
So recollecting how my depths were moved, 

In hours when I like them was overthrown. 

Yet it was said, no scourges matched my 
own ; 
How light then must our mortal burden lie, 

When passing-heaviest of the ages known. 
With not one darkening trace shall wander by. 

194 



Thou who didst wrap me in that vale of shade, 
Which then I deemed the night that never 
dies, 

Now, ere its memory shall forever fade. 

For that alone my lowliest thanks arise : 
There was the birth of life's diviner guise ; 

Wide is the blessing Thou hast since let fall, 
Sweet and serene my lingering sunset lies, 

But Thou in thine own cloud wert more than all. 



THE LATEST NUN 

In her Order of consecration, 

Walks the Nun of the latter day; 

In Perpetual Adoration, 

That embosoms her sainted way. 

I know her, the Rule attending. 
By her ensign of angel white, 

That seems not a fashion's lending, 
But her soul come forth to sight. 

As old as the Bethlehem tidings, 
Her graces are evermore ; 

But her beautiful footstep's glidings 
Are not in the haunts of yore. 

They seek not the dumb seclusion 
Of shadowing Convent's bar; 

They cherish not Heaven's illusion. 
By leaving the World afar. 

In the homes of sorrowing mothers, 

She fixes her votive cell ; 
Each beat of her heart, for others ; 

Each night-hour, her watches tell. 

195 



The pest-house worships her labors, 

The warded cots above; 
Where men beseech, are her neighbors; 

Where children pine, is her love. 

Her prayers are the invocation 

Of mightiest Nature's aid, 
To redeem her fallen creation, 

In travail and anguish laid. 

I know not her hours of kneeling, 
I count not her hymns or beads. 

But I know that her task is healing, 
Her life is of Christ's own deeds. 

She remembers the word He taught her, 

''As unto the least of these, 
Thou hast done to Me, true daughter," 

And offers no louder pleas. 

O, soft was the cloistered pavement. 
And sweet was the hermit fare, 

To the toil of this dear enslavement, 
The throb of this heart-borne care! 

The barren sister, whose chanting 
To the fruitless moon appealed. 

Was bud of the heavenly planting. 
This day in its bloom revealed. 

It is holiest maiden mother, 

Whose ministration mild, 
Makes every laborer brother. 

And every sufferer child. 

Not less be the consecration. 

But more, of the heart with hand ; 

Till the Virgin of Adoration 
At her Bridal altar stand. 

196 



LOVER'S WALK 

The old elm-branches, softening to the spring, 
Above us arched, like sheltering angel wing ; 

The moon between them cast 
Upon the street-walk falling to its rest. 
As late the hours declined her toward the west, 
Her narrower gleams, that clambered and ca- 
ressed 

Our shoulders as we passed. 

Fast there in arm-lock, our unguided way 
Soft wandered with the steps of opening May: 

Nor was the dying wind, 
That lifted scarce the leaflets' yellowy green, 
Translucent to the purifying sheen, 
A tenderer cadence than our own, I ween. 

Nor was its touch more kind. 

There converse from its inmost fountains flowed ; 
But m.an and maiden melted not nor glowed. 

Where silver arches bend. 
My mate was comrade not of mortal aim ; 
He in the shade of fresh affliction came, 
From ruin of his home ; mine but the claim 

Companion aid to lend. 

Yet not the strong supporting clasp was mine ; 
In him the comfort rose, on me to shine ; 

He taught, I lowly learned ; 
Of love that spanned the gulf of death he told, 
Of love that not the tides of fate controlled, 
Of love that from the heart all burden rolled. 

Of love, that Heaven returned. 



197 



MICROCOSM 

He has granted thee, in Httle, 

His transcendent scheme to trace ; 
Think not, if thy will be brittle. 

Thou the eternal Will shalt face. 
Shape thy own fulfillment lowly, 

As it ought and as it might. 
And the sovran Purpose holy 

Then shall dawn upon thy sight. 



MILITANT 

"I thought, for once and all I had fixed the 
choice ; 
But once was evermore. 
How many a thousand times I heard the voice, 
And framed the answering vov/: 
Let all the strife be o'er ! 
Ev'n here, this very now. 
Lay dowii the burden of thy own desire; 

Know never longing or lament, again! 
And still the years go on, and still their hours 
require 
The rending and repair, the peace with pain. 
Shall never triumph in its fulness rise. 
But foes unconquered still the Throne despise?" 

What, though the conflict last? 
Shall thO'Usand victories be less than one? 

The great surrender, when its act was passed, 
Led all the blessing since thy time begun ; 

Shall not its image every day be blest? 
Should not kind ofiice and uniting soul 
Renew each hour the vow that made us whole ? 
Find in My warfare peace, and in My business 
rest. 



198 



MORNING AND AFTERNOON 

In early hours, of the starry dew, 

Of the birds that heaven and earth made one, 
My joy of labor, as wide and new. 

Awoke to the everlasting sun. 

My land was large, or its bounds I knew not. 

All conception of life was there; 
No bloom of beauty, or harvest grew not, 

Well I assured me, with my good care. 

And many a breathing furrow turned 
Before me, and entered many a seed ; 

And many a thicket I swept and burned. 
And warred on spoiler, and bog and weed. 

There was cottage, and forge, and mansion spa- 
cious, 
Scattered afar on my broad estate ; 
They found me and witnessed me just and gra- 
cious ; 
I gave them lease, and they kept their rate. 

One house, exploring a field untrod, 

I marked, which labor nor dwelling claimed ; 

It avowed not service to man, but God ; 

Nor of earth nor her arts was the fabric named. 

"What means this heap, that it yields no duty?" 

I asked ; "their reason the rest have found ; 
They stood for use, or they stood for beauty ; 
. But this, why cumbereth it the ground?" 

"Ah, be not rash," said a hoary wight. 
Whom guarding the solemn vaults I saw ; 

"The fulness of earth is in thy right ; 
But a little for God, his word and law." 

199 



"I worship more than ye all, and purer," 
I cried, ''in the freedom of Nature's rule ; 

You fancy your hold of heaven is surer 

By wasteful pomp and by worn-out school? 

"You wrong the heart with your tyrant creed, 
Poor man and his Maker you stand between. 

Time once might be, when you served a need ; 
But long outdated your term has been." 

''Between poor man and his Maker, truly. 
We stand," he answered, "to lead him on. 

Our olden bidding, forever newly. 

We follow, in steps of saints foregone. 

"Not we as they, but our Lord as theirs, 
And the pledged salvation is now as then. 

The flock destroy not, for whom He cares ; 
But infold thyself, with the best of men." 

"I weary, your ancient rotes to hearken," 
I ended parley, "your humble pride, 

Your vaunts of light, that the vv^orld but darken. 
Your blessing, that curses all beside. 

"I grant you the glory of long ago, 

But w^here is its likeness, and in whom? 

In ourselves, who renew that life below, 
Not you, who build and adorn the tomb. 

"And I do you to wit, that the world is moving 
We grind not now with the water past. 

Free spirits advancing, learning, loving, 
A God find living, not buried fast. 

"No age of the world has wended by. 
But weaker your shrunken frame appears. 

It saves you rent, but the time is nigh, 

That shall close the fraud of so many yeats. 

200 



"I will not rend it, nor lay in ashes ; 

Too like yourselves the proscription grim. 
But look, when your mouldering dungeon crashes. 

Ask me no aid to the spectre dim." 



II 

The afternoon on my toiling came ; 

I was not broken, I scarce was sad ; 
My strength was with me, and mind the same ; 
Or ampler discourse it had. 

But now, in the prospect I had not known, 

By very growth of the inward span. 
How mightily more the world had grown, 
How little the deed of man ! 

The works that had been my fairy realm. 

The houses, quick with their trade and hum, 
The purpose high that had kept the helm. 
To what had their striving come? 

I wandered wide on my pale domain, 

In a sun more potent methought than noon, 
When the dew and the song had quit the plain. 
And breath was a lingering swoon. 

The arid land had my spirit seared. 

From the noisy doors of unrest I shrank; 
Nor aught of refreshment round appeared. 
To cherish the heart that sank. 

And a billow of music, earthward rolled, 

As from soundless depth on the desert broke ; 
And the temple that I had viewed of old, 
In my trance before me woke. 

I gained the portal, I trod the aisle. 
The cell where the gloom was more than light ; 

20I 



And the cavern air of the awful pile 

Breathed o'er me the balm of night. 

And a living spring at the court within, 
With its lowly pulse all drought allayed. 

wine, what madness, (3 sweets, what sin, 

To that pure content, unpaid ! 

The fane had given what none else gave. 

In the range of my fond aspiring quest; 
They offered me all that act might crave. 
But here was the shrine of rest. 

And many another beside I found. 

Who reached a glimpse and a rescue there; 
The poor was rich in that shaded ground, 
Of the people whose speech was prayer. 

1 listened again to the chanted rite ; 

There was fable, and idol, and old-world lore. 
I could not vouch what their tales indite; 
Scarce further than e'er before. 

But I found no ill to undo the good, 

No ban to outweigh the blessing's worth ; 
And the name they called on their brotherhood, 
The divinest name on earth. 

Forth under the evening rays I came ; 

I noted the warp and the creviced wall ; 
And I vowed repair of the shrinking frame, 
That had yielded me best of all. 



202 



ONLY A SHADOW 

There dwelt a tribe of weary toilers, 

Down a meadow near the sea ; 
By famine sieged and rent by spoilers, 

Brown with labor of their lea. 

So clouded oft, so marred and wasted, 

Life its very light denied; 
But evermore at eve they hasted, 

And with morning, to the tide. 

Once wrapt among the folding surges^ 

In their unpolluted breath, 
Their music from creation's verges, 

x\ll oppression sank beneath. 

There was the roll and there the thunder. 
There the flower of mist and foam. 

There was the love and there the wonder. 
There infinity and home. 

None marvelled, who had seen the gladness. 
Known the strength, of that embrace, 

At those who longed to purge their sadness 
In the wave, and scars efface. 

And many a song they sang of saving. 
Fresh from out the blessed spray. 

And hymned the eternal fountain, laving 
All the ills of man away. 

Then some reviled their pure endeavor : 
"What does Ocean care for you? 

Did he respect your wailing ever? 
Will he change, or will he rue? 

"Look, and behold his desolations ! 
Ray of heart can you behold ? 



Adore him all your age, ye nations, 
He will slay you as of old." 

We think to change him ? Grace f orf end us !- 
Answered they who all had seen ; 

What more could all his kingdom lend us, 
But to find him^ and be clean? 



PAVILION 

Well may I rest, tho' storm and war 

The world of foreign shores convulse; 
The blast of evil from so far 
Stirs not my pulse. 

Rest may be mine, tho' o'er my land 

Perturbing rumor scour amain ; 
They watch, who on her sentry stand ; 
I dream again. 

Tho' uproar all the city shake, 

No wonder I may find release ; 
The loftier crests the lightnings take; 
Grass waves at peace. 

I may repose me undismayed 

With neighboring strife and wrecks hard by 
I love my neighbor, and will aid ; 
Not he am I, 

Tho' in my house disaster smite. 

Shall be an hour of calm allowed ; 
The torch of comfort sifts a light 
Thro' deepest cloud. 

My own poor frame in pangs may writhe, 
Yet peace of thought redeem the pain ; 

204 



Apart withdraw the spirit blithe, 
And mock the chain. 

But if that very spirit chafe, 

And all disquiet beat within ; 
There find the harbor, still and safe, 
And sleep begin? 

When I was all but strife and sea, 

How came the truce, the haven blest ? 
The toil and tumult were of me ; 
Not mine, the rest. 



THE PIPE 

Nor pipe for Fortune's finger. 

Empty, idle tube of wood! 

Even so much, or splintering reed? 
Tarriest thou for any good? 

Where canst thou arrive at need? 

Once the leaf about thee played; 

Once the flower thy stature crowned ; 
Once the sap thy veins arrayed ; 

Flashed the light bird once around. 

Not all these so much I miss: 
Once upon thee breathed the wind. 

Ah, the passion of that kiss ! 

Pulseless now, all dumb and blind. 

None may lift thee for a tool ; 

Build or burn with thee, not now; 
Hollow timber for the fool. 

Staff of comfort art not thou. 



205 



Yet thy form was not so mean ; 

Yet a care about thee shone. 
Shall the hour be never seen 

For thy purpose? Only one. 

When the breath shall inward stream, 
From the power that shaped thy frame, 

Then shall Heaven around thee gleam ; 
Then shall be thy act and fame. 

All the losses who shall mourn 
Of thy earth-won riches then? 

None shall think how lowly born ; 
Thou shalt voice the soul of men» 

This is all for thee, poor quill; 

Yet what part in this is thine? 
Only as thy maker will. 

Be of dust and be divine. 



SILVER AND GOLD 

How have I stammered, rendering Thee and 
Thine, 

Thou Silence of the world ! 
Would not my dumbness too be more divine, 

Than sound so haply hurled? 
As, Lord of all. Thy form nowhere is known, 

And everywhere Thy reign. 
So let Thy being quicken all my own. 

And take from breath no stain! 
Yet I the silence hymn by speech alone ; 
And rising, not prostration, nears the throne. 



206 



PURE TO THE PURE 

There were two whom once in a walk I heard, 
As in grave discourse their thoughts conferred ; 
For they were defining severally 
Their sense of the sweet name Purity. 
And whose were rather my kindred voice, 
And which conclusion were Reason's choice, 

Not mine to answer ; their speech is here ; 
But I sought to know them ere I returned, 
And the one was Man, one God, I learned : 

And the first was speaking, as I drew near : 
"Unspotted amid the world to dwell, 
To centre Heaven in fumes of Hell, 
No thought of ill in the heart to bear. 
No idol of vice to harbor there, 
No outward action or thought within 
To flee the light or to savor of sin. 
As cradled infant, as maiden's breast. 
Void of concupiscence unconf essed ; 
Corruptless of honors, of passion, of gain. 
In the ocean of evil a rock to remain !" 

There was more that I hold not ; but after long. 
The voice I had waited rejoined the song; 
''The vision is well for a land of dreams ; 
Another the waking feature seems. 
To know the sound of her holy name. 
To feel her breath in thy loss and shame. 
To bear with others' and with thine own 
Defeat, when resolve is overthrown ; 
When the heart of thy soul is taint of lust. 
Upward still to regard, and trust ; 
Hopeless to be what thy spirit would. 
Wearing the evil, doing good; 
What thou art, and what must be. 
Knowing, thou art pure to me." 



207 



REGENERATION 

The plowman in his furrow left the share, 

As o'er his arm the prophet's mantle fell; 
He might have worn his years with creeping 
care, 
For age to bend him and for death to quell, 
He might have branched or withered, ill or 
well, 
And Jordan legends been his utmost lore. 
No fancy tracked his flights to heaven or 
hell,— 
One touch of that anointing hand passed o'er, 
He rose and shone afar, aloft and evermore. 

Here in our lots of earthly accident, 

Fast rooted to the soil of petty pains. 
We fare, on phantom joy and promise bent. 

Or emptier phantoms, unrequiting gains ; 

Till, far from will of ours, amidst all stains. 
By ruling step the devious path is crost, 

The Savior o'er his inward kingdom reigns. 
The child of earth is ranked in heavenly host. 
And woe to those who miss, to those who found 
and lost! 

But Thou, whose law these high-born gleam- 
ings trace. 
Hast wiselier set thy seeds than so to mould ; 
A thousand waves thy Spirit's prints efface, 
A thousand ways renewed the impressures 

hold; 
Thy gracious tracks frequent us myriad-fold ; 
The stir of morning, sunburst after rain. 

Glimpse of warm heart, of azured highland 
cold. 
The motions from within, explored in vain ; 
Bring on the eternal birth, the vanished Heaven 
regain. 

208 



SPEECH OF ANGELS 

My business, on a time, 

Beyond our misty clime. 
In traffic led me by the bounds of Heaven ; 

I did not entrance win. 

But I often saw within, 
And came to know the sky-folk, six or seven. 

I have not much to tell. 

Of things that there befell; 
In the books where those are written you may 
seek ; 

The place is not, in fact. 

Very loudly famed for act; 
But only this, I heard the Angels speak. 

As to this I had heard much, 

And had the notion, such. 
No doubt as others, when the phrase they turn ; 

It is here I would correct 

That use, in one respect: 
I never heard in life a sound so stern. 

Not as the babbling voice, 

In which we all rejoice, 
When baby tries the strings he has not learned ; 

Not of the maiden's kind, 

Soft as the cedar-wind. 
In which our beings have so thrilled and yearned ; 

Not as the queen of song, 

So tender and so strong, 
Nor as any tone of music we can teach ; 

Not as any sound at all. 

That angelic we would call. 
Seemed^ when I heard it first, that angel speech. 



209 



Be sure it was not loud ; 

But well I might have vowed, 
No thunder ever shook the bone like this ; 

I shivered with strange fear. 

And looked about the sphere. 
And wondered, That they call the land of bliss? 

It seemed, an iron yoke 
Drew on me when they spoke, 

That bound me, every sense and every limb; 
Through action, word, look, thought. 
Seemed to run the stricture. Ought, 

With a scent of something like damnation grim. 

I did but as they would, 

For nothing else I could ; 
But this of all was what the strangest seemed : 

In a course of time the yoke 

From off my shoulders broke. 
And the voice grew even lovelier than I dreamed. 

Its tone was just the same 

As when there the first I came; 

I suppose I got accustomed to the sound ; 
So I thought I just w^ould say, 
If you chance to pass that way, 

And should hear it, not be frightened ofif the 
ground. 



210 



THE UNREGARDED 

"The last, forever still the last! 

Am I the only worthless hand? 
The others, great and small, have passed, 
With sliding glance athwart me cast; 
No station else to stand? 

'T labored, faithful, morn and eve ; 

My gifts were scarce at meanest rate. 
The rest commend me, use, and leave ; 
They promise, parley, and deceive ; 
I watch, and serve, and wait. 

"My early hours forecast m.e fair ; 

The snows are gathering on me now. 
Still all the train advances there ; 
I drop to loneness of despair — 
Save one ; and who art thou ? 

"Poor lorn companion, like to me, 
Look up, unmantle, sound a word ! 

Long have I felt, though slighted thee : 

So. now at last thy face I see ; 
And — save me ! Thou, my Lord ?" 

Yes. deep discoverer, who beside : 
Was I not always here, the last? 
Last in thy heart, thy hope, thy pride? 
I watched thy brave processions glide, 
And I was overpast. 

Had I been first in thy desire. 

Thou hadst not stood repining here ; 
Thou wouldst not first or last require; 
For none precede and none retire, 
Upon the eternal sphere. 



211 



URANIA 

Come, dear old world, and reason together, 

One more conference, thou and I ; 
No longer stumble, and ponder whether, 

Having all, we can have reply. 

I have seen, thou thinkest thy gods are taken, 
And falterest, what thou shalt have more. 

Consider it well, what things are shaken. 
And what remain, if they leave thee poor. 

On all thy thirst are my fountains waiting, 
In sky-born freshness, as first they shone. 

Not always open to storm or prating. 
My answer flows to the gentler tone. 

What wo'uldst thou crave? — '*Is Our Father liv- 
ing?" 

I tell thee yes, and thy search will find. 
"May then my asking expect His giving?" 

Expect, but of His, not earthly kind. 

'*Is the Scripture true?" There is faithful Bible, 
Yea, in the lids of the Semite book. 

Time cannot darken it, mockery libel ; 
Search, but learn with what eye to look. 

'Ts Christ divine?" He is more, than feigning 
Of Orient fable, and seedless birth ; 

He needs no ointment, for pomp of reigning, 
No voice to herald him lord of earth. 

"When I have lived, shall I live hereafter?" 

Life is wave of an endless tide. 
Make of thy doubts and thy Self thy laughter; 

Life will tell thee, and language hide. 



313 



THE WOOING 

LOVER 

loved and longed for, I am not worthy 
That thou shouldst look on a lot like mine ; 

Thy station is heavenly, mine is earthy, 
My human falters at thy divine. 

But since this love thou hast breathed, and yearn- 
ing. 
That life no more can suffice my heart, 
Whose mornless dark and whose quenchless 
burning 
Abide no question, but Where thou art? — 

And since thy beauty hath shone upon me, 
A glimpse of an hour, a rise begun, 

1 dream that thou, who in all hast won me, 
By me in portion wilt yet be won. 

What gifts and duties am I to pay thee? 

I know not well, where thy steps withdraw ; 
Have I to serve thee, or I to pray thee? 

joy to keep, if I knew, thy law ! 

There may be wiser, who kno'W' thee better; 

And I thy nature may learn from these; 
To them and to thee perpetual debtor, 

1 then with knowledge may hope to please. 

And thou, have pity on long devotion, 
On lonely hunger, that cries to thee! 

From thy unfathomed and shoreless ocean, 
Make known a pilot, a path for me ! 



213 



BELOVED 

That I have kindness for thy loyal earnest, 

My bending- to this plaint of thine may prove ; 
That in such formless acts and sighs thou learn- 
est 

The way that leads to love. 

But if thy heart were truly mine entreasured, 
Hadst thou a surer wooing not yet found, 
Than all this tribute, pondered out and measured, 
On doubtful suppliance bound? 

Would others' counsel bear thee on to gain me, 

Were thy dear purpose in itself but whole? 
Who came between, to flatter or constrain me, 
I nearest in thy soul? 

Thy vows and offerings of corruption's chattels, 
Thy probing science that would hunt me down, 
Do hearts win hearts in Love's adventurous battles 
By these, and wear his crown? 

Another merchandise, I pray thee render, 

Another lore, not many arts, but one; 
Thyself, and not thy world of goods, were tender 
To make me thine, alone. 



214 



"Where hast Thou been, so long? 
These many months have worn, and Thou not 

near; 
And shall they shrink together, till the year 
Take leave without Thee? hast Thou any fear 
Thy child to gladden with thy strength and 
song ?" 

What are these names, to me ? 
I know not what they mean, thy months and 

years ; 
Nought of thy times, and little of thy tears. 
If I was ever with thee, I am now ; 
Were I not with thee ever, how couldst thou 
Call thus upon me? What is it to thee 
If dark upon thee turn the orb or light. 
So thou has found the course? Hold but thy 
sight 
At anchor there forever, firm and pure ; 
And my returns are sure. 



215 



NOTES. 

Libyssa. The town in Western Asia where Hannibal 
died ; evading the pursuit of the Romans by taking 
poison from his ring, which is here supposed to be 
one selected from the spoil of Cannae. 

Christianity in the Apostles. From Acts XV. The old- 
est of the four Gospels is assumed to be that of 
Mark. 

Time and the Minstrels. Why some of the Greek poets 
were preserved, and others as famous perished. 
As they are mentioned in turn, there is some ap- 
proximation to their usual metres. — Ascrcean: 
Hesiod. 

Oak of Boniface. This "Apostle of the Germans," 
first named Winfred, cut down a sacrificial oak 
of the heathen Saxons, and made it into a shrine or 
chapel of St. Peter. — Some of the stanzas are 
translated from Oehlenschlager's "Gods of the 
North." 

Saint Adelaide. Pure history, as far as the history is 
given. She seems to be not regularly canonized, 
but known as Saint in popular tradition. In 
French the name would be Adelaide, in Italian Ade- 
laida, in German Adelheid. 

Haunting of Olaf. This legend has been treated by 
Longfellow, in his "Wraith of Odin," from the Saga 
of King Olaf, Tales of a Wayside Inn ; a fact quite 
overlooked at the time of this composition. 

Home of Adalbert. Church name of Bohemian Woi- 
tech, "Apostle of the Prussians," martyred by them, 
about the year looo. Legend varies ; the form here 
followed expresses the Monastic overpowering the 
Missionary spirit, and Rome becoming more potent 
as a memory and an ideal, than as a seat of actual 
power. 

Exile and Return. Meditation of Dante, near the close 
of his life, after failure of the last scheme for his 
restoration to his native city. 

Jehanne. Old form of "Jeanne" Dare, the Maid of Or- 
leans. One syllable. 

Wolfe. From the familiar account of Wolfe reciting 
Gray's Elegy on the eve of his final attempt upon 
Quebec. "One hand there is" : Pitt, afterward 
Earl of Chatham. 



217 



Hope of the Moor. It is said that Moors in Africa, 
descendants of those banished from Spain, still 
keep the title-deeds and keys of mansions there, ex- 
pecting to return. It might be supposed that the 
invective toward the close, expressed the animosity 
against Spain excited by the war of 1898, at which 
time indeed the piece was written. But this appear- 
ance was a regret to the writer, who consulted only 
the propriety of the situation. See next poem, 
"Spain's own Story." 

Pentliolatry. Worship of Sorrow. 



218 



':iyu^ 



